


All but the Things that Cannot Be Torn

by qaftsiel



Series: In the East Wind [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-01-14 11:05:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1264006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qaftsiel/pseuds/qaftsiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As John struggles to find equilibrium yet again, Sherlock is called in to investigate a series of seemingly random killings, connected only by the weapon and the lack of any other evidence. The further he gets into the case, however, the more it becomes evident that someone is keenly intent upon driving him away at any cost.</p><p>Takes place immediately after the events of Behind Every Great Fortune.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all! Apologies for the long radio silence; my life has essentially consisted of sleeping, teaching, and writing lesson plans for the past month. I've found just enough time for Pathfinder and writing for a few hours on Saturdays, and this has been the result of much of that.
> 
> This follows Behind Every Great Fortune. The events of that story are what precipitate everything in this one-- I strongly recommend you read it first. Rest assured the rating will go up; for now, however, I believe a T rating will be adequate.
> 
> To everyone who left such wonderful comments on Behind Every Great Fortune, thank you so very much! I wouldn't feel confident enough to keep telling this story if it weren't for your support and cheering-on. 
> 
> Please let me know if you spot any errors or Americanisms. I haven't a beta or a Britpicker.

            John is on the couch again when Sherlock ascends the steps to 221B. He doesn’t respond to Sherlock’s noise or the baby crying in Sherlock’s armchair; heaving a quiet sigh, Sherlock leaves the bags on the sitting room floor and collects the infant from the chair.

 

            He’s halfway through a feed when Mycroft appears in the kitchen doorway. “Brother,” he growls.

 

            Mycroft stares at the baby in Sherlock’s arms. She’s eating heartily, apparently unperturbed by her father’s distress. “Sherlock, _what_ have you done?” Mycroft breathes.

 

            After a long, frigid moment of insulted silence, Sherlock hisses, “Get out.”

 

            Predictably, Mycroft does exactly the opposite of what Sherlock wants—he sets his umbrella aside and strides around the table, looming over Sherlock like he thinks it’ll make Sherlock more inclined to obey. “Sherlock Holmes, whatever you’ve done, you need to return that child to her mother _right this instant_.”

 

            Sherlock stands carefully but decisively and brushes past Mycroft, going to his Belstaff where it hangs by the front door. He jerks his head to indicate the coat. “You have a bug in my mobile; the last call made will explain. Get it and then _get. out._ ”

 

            He can see it when Mycroft notices John motionless on the couch and the bags of baby equipment on the floor. He can see the recalculations happening, followed shortly by the conclusion that yes, Mycroft has squarely put his foot in it. Wordlessly, the elder Holmes collects Sherlock’s mobile, tucks it away into a pocket, and departs.

 

            Readjusting the baby, Sherlock tips the bottle up a bit; she’s still eating, if slowly. For a moment, he considers the empty space by John’s feet on the couch. For another moment, he considers the tense line of John’s back and the way his toes are tightly curled. He returns to the kitchen.

 

            ***

           

            Hours come and go. The baby eats, cries, defecates, and drowses; Sherlock feeds, soothes, changes, and settles her. When he realises that the cadence she’s established is similar to his own natural rhythms (a fortunate thing for her, really), he begins to wonder what else about her he might quantify. Shortly thereafter, he sacrifices a blank notebook to science, retrieves his personal stethoscope from his closet, and commences baseline measurements.

 

            She is forty-eight point five three centimetres from the top of her head to the tips of her toes; this, according to the Internet, is within average bounds. Her heart and breathing sound normal, though he has to consult the Internet again to ensure that a heart rate of one hundred and thirty four beats per minute is normal (it is). As she did not protest being uncurled a bit to obtain the length measurement, Sherlock gently lifts her and sets her on the kitchen scale. She does not fuss about this, either—she merely watches with her peculiar, unfocussed gaze as he notes that she has a mass of three point two six kilograms.

 

            The Internet informs him that the baby’s eye colour is not permanent, but he notes it nonetheless, even going so far as to fetch his paint swatches to match it as precisely as possible. Delving into the genetics of eye colour reveals that the phenotype is infuriatingly difficult to predict with precision, so he makes do with what he can and gives a general prediction of ‘dark blue’. He does not note his bias toward a particular denim-and-hazel.

 

            Slow footsteps on the stair draw Sherlock out of his typing and notating. Sighing, he tucks the baby into the wicker ‘Moses basket’ and goes back to note-taking. Guilt is such a boring emotion.

 

            Mycroft appears in the kitchen doorway. Rather than announce himself verbally, he presents Sherlock with the baby’s birth certificate and her chart from the hospital.

 

            It’s as much of a peace offering as Sherlock suspects he’ll get, and Sherlock is not above taking advantage of a guilty conscience (however underdeveloped that conscience may be). He accepts the papers and his brother’s presence with a sneer and little else. Mycroft, though meddlesome, will invariably prove a valuable resource in the long run, particularly if Mary becomes involved in any of his cases. “What do you intend to do?” he asks quietly, glancing up from his laptop screen long enough to see that Mycroft has seated himself at the kitchen table as well.

 

            “For the time being, she is merely being watched. Interference is too risky,” Mycroft replies. His eyes go from the wicker basket to the open notebook by Sherlock’s elbow. Sherlock’s script is messy, but Mycroft has years of experience reading it from all angles—the table of feeding times and volumes under the baby’s heart rate, length, and weight may as well be in bold, plain print. “You really do intend to go through with this, brother?”

 

            Sherlock rolls his eyes. The answer to that question is obvious enough. Instead, he looks over the certificate of birth. “She is unnamed,” he remarks. The blank space on the page is irrationally troubling.

 

            Mycroft nods. “An infant must be registered within forty-two days of birth,” he replies, running one fingertip over the embossed border of the certificate. “John has forty days to do so, if security footage of the hospital is accurate.”

 

            There’s a period of quiet.

 

            “I have granted you access to your fund,” Mycroft says at length.

 

            Sherlock looks up sharply.

 

            Rolling his eyes, Mycroft sighs. “Don’t look so shocked. You have been... _ogling_ that stem cell extraction adaptor for weeks, yet you spent more than half of the money you’d saved for it on equipment for the infant?” He shakes his head. “I never thought I would witness such a thing, not after you tried to—”

 

            “Yes, yes, fine, thank you, is that what you want to hear?” Sherlock interjects, glancing into the sitting room. Learning of Sherlock’s attempts to sell superfluous organs to black market dealers for drugs money would be deleterious to John’s already-compromised stability (nevermind that the incident took place nearly seven years ago), so Sherlock cannot have that. “If you’re not going to be of any further help, leave. You’ll wake the baby.” He goes back to his research and notation despite the lack of anything new to record.

 

            Thankfully, Mycroft obeys. Until the baby wakes an hour later, the quiet in the flat goes uninterrupted.

 

            ***

 

            The baby is asleep when the clock in the corner of Sherlock’s laptop screen ticks over into zeroes. He sighs and stretches in his armchair, toes flexing and curling—of all the things he expected to find online, an evidence-based parenting and feeding website was not one of them, but the surprise is a happy one. He’s been engrossed for hours, only pausing in his reading to feed and check the baby (21:55, 15.5 mL, unsoiled diaper) or move her from his chest to the basket and vice versa.

 

            John doesn’t appear to have moved during any of this time. He isn’t asleep, judging by his breathing, but he’s in exactly the same position as he had been.

 

            As the baby is asleep, Sherlock stands from the armchair and tucks her basket into it in his place. He approaches John without bothering to walk quietly and sits down in the space at the end of the sofa where John’s toes don't quite reach.

 

            John kicks him with force. When Sherlock does not budge, John makes an animal sound and kicks him again.

 

            Well, tries to kick him again. Sherlock seizes his ankle and pins it to the sofa, which John apparently takes as his cue to lunge for Sherlock (how he does that from his side and with his upper leg pinned, Sherlock does not know) with his teeth bared and his eyes flashing. Three years earlier, Sherlock might not have reacted in time to defend himself, but his reflexes have been honed with two long, tense years of frequent use. He releases John’s ankle and goes instead for his wrists, drawing John into a grapple that sends them tumbling to the floor. Penned by the couch and the coffee table, Sherlock’s guile and flexibility win out—he’s able to maintain his position on top and flip John over, pinning him in place.

 

            “What do you _want?_ ” John snarls, thrashing.

 

            Sherlock keeps John pinned. “You have not moved for over eight hours.”

 

            John goes still. He’s breathing with heavy, growling huffs, much the way he had when Sherlock had first revealed himself at the restaurant. Between Sherlock’s knees, John’s hands clench and unclench. Sherlock harbours no delusions of safety; if he lets go, John will do him grievous injury.

 

            That or do himself grievous injury. The former is undesirable; the latter is unacceptable.

 

            “Why do you—” John starts, clenching jaw and fists briefly, “—why do you care?”

 

            Sherlock bows his head over John’s back. “Does it matter?”

 

            “Yes,” John replies, voice flat and cold.

 

            There are a number of possible answers. None of them are untrue, but some are denser truths than others.

 

            Sherlock is a coward. “Your shoulder is already causing you pain, and staying on the couch will only worsen the problem.”

 

            “You sitting on me is worsening the problem,” snaps John, and though his tone is combative, Sherlock feels the tension drain out of his back and arms.

 

            Releasing his grip on John’s wrists, Sherlock gets up and out of John’s reach as quickly as possible without appearing fearful. He retreats to his armchair and the baby in her basket. “You may take my bed for the night,” he says as he watches the baby sleep and listens to John as he stiffly, slowly gets back to his feet. “She will awaken shortly, and then two to three hours after that; it is likely that I will only nap.”

 

            Sherlock listens as slightly distressed breathing and the soft hush of wool on wool move across the room from the sofa to the kitchen. The sounds pause there suddenly, and the air in the room seems strangely charged as Sherlock realises that John must be looking at the notebook sitting open on the kitchen table. Thick paper rustles—John is looking at the birth certificate, too.

 

            “Forty days,” John says, and takes himself and his sounds down the hall to Sherlock’s bedroom.

 

            Whether he’s telling Sherlock or reminding himself isn’t clear.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On to chapter two. Hopefully this once-weekly schedule will continue to hold; with standardised testing bringing teaching to a standstill, I expect I should be able to get good work done as the kids sit around and watch movies (I hope they like Treasure Planet). 
> 
> Yet again, any alerts as to Americanisms or other errors are much appreciated, as I have no beta or Britpicker to speak of.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

            Morning arrives with wan, grey light and the kind of persistent, fine mist that leaves the unprepared gently drenched and chilled to the bone as soon as they’re just too far away from home to turn back for a coat.

 

            Sherlock stands in the window of 221B with the baby, watching passers-by and narrating his deconstruction of their most visible tells in a low murmur. “Barrister,” he says as a man with an umbrella, a leather briefcase, and a finely tailored tweed greatcoat steps out of one of the flats across the street. “Expensive coat says wealthy, either currently or in the past; fashionable but understated cut and lapel style says independent wealth with a lower-middle class upbringing, though old money and a modest or clever nature are possible as well.” The barrister flags down a cab; his left foot is plainly in the middle of a sizeable puddle. “Rich enough not to care about the state of his shoes or practical enough to have them waterproofed,” Sherlock concludes.

 

            Much like the skull, the baby doesn’t have a verbal response; unlike the skull, she turns her head and roots about under his chin.

 

            The microwave dings. Sherlock leaves the window and retrieves the bottle, swirling the contents and then testing them on his wrist before placing the nipple within the infant’s hungry reach. Watching her latch on and begin to suckle is strangely gratifying.

 

            The mist remains unrelenting, but Baker Street’s morning stirrings continue apace. “Runner,” Sherlock notes as a woman in black leggings and a stocking cap splashes through the puddle the barrister had been standing in a moment earlier. He resumes his position at the window, baby in one arm and bottle supported with the other. “Runner with a capital R, that is, to be out in this weather and at such a pace.”

 

            Shuffling in the hall announces John’s wakefulness. Sherlock quietly monitors his friend’s location by hearing again—the stiff, brisk post-night-terror movements nearly always come hand in hand with a temper on a very short, unpredictable fuse.

 

            A slight change in the pressure on the bottle tells Sherlock that the baby is done eating. He pulls the nipple away from her lips with little trouble and notes the volume consumed (sixteen millilitres) before setting the bottle on the desk and exchanging it for the burping cloth. Spreading it over his shoulder, he rearranges the infant and pats her back firmly.

 

            “Fucking bizarre,” John mutters nearby. Sherlock turns just enough to see him watching the baby and Sherlock’s hand with tired eyes. Over Sherlock’s shoulder, the baby belches. John purses his lips and averts his gaze, studying the kitchen table. “She’s eating, at least.”

 

            Sherlock regards John with a small frown. “She is well within normal ranges as far as appearance and behaviour are concerned—there is nothing bizarre about her.”

 

            John rolls his eyes, but the corners of his mouth threaten to curve upwards. “Not her, you git. You with a baby is weird. You with _my_ baby is—” It’s clearly visible when the circumstances that have brought his baby into Sherlock’s arms make themselves plain in the forefront of John’s thoughts. His face falls into tired lines over a clenched jaw so suddenly it’s almost audible. “It’s fucking weird, is all.” He limps into the kitchen in stony silence, his left fist clenching and unclenching, and grabs up Sherlock’s pen. “What time did you feed her?”

 

            “Five forty-nine,” Sherlock responds, “and concluded at five fifty-seven. Sixteen millilitres, up from her previous feed.”

 

            Another hearty belch from the baby interrupts the sound of John scratching out the next entry in Sherlock’s notebook. “You’ve been keeping tight records,” John notes, scanning the tables with a doctor’s eye. He looks up at Sherlock every so often, brow furrowed and lips tight. When he finishes reading, he braces both hands on the kitchen table. “Why.” He clears his throat. “Why are you doing this?”

 

            Sherlock lifts the corner of the burping towel and gently dabs at the baby’s mouth. “She is interesting,” he replies, though the _‘because she is part of you’_ remains unsaid. Sherlock does not state the obvious. “Insofar as humanity is concerned, children are generally tolerable. Their dependency is excusable, their lack of knowledge is rectifiable, and their noise is relatively simple to filter.” He holds the baby out and looks at her. She looks back with sleepy, squinted eyes and flexes her fingers. “She is an excellent audience.”

 

            John hangs his head over the notebook and his hands curl into fists on the table. “She had better not be an experiment, Sherlock. If she’s just a replacement for the skull or a convenient way to pass the time until the next case...”

 

            “Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock interrupts sharply, bringing the baby back to his shoulder to resume burping her. She is John’s daughter and Sherlock made a _vow_ —no, made _the_ vow, his first, last, and only vow. “I did not make that vow on a whim, John Watson. You’d do well to remember that before suggesting I am merely relieving boredom by _keeping your daughter alive._ I was not the one who ignored her not once but _twice_ as she lay crying.”

           

            The only thing stopping John from exploding (shouting and possibly punching Sherlock, if the set of his jaw and the whiteness of his knuckles are any indication) is the fact that Sherlock is holding the baby. Sherlock doesn’t hesitate to heed his instinct to turn his body and put his shoulder between John and the baby. Body language will help drive the point home even more firmly—Sherlock should not be the only one shielding the baby, and John should not be the one from whom the baby needs shielding.

 

            John’s voice rasps and rumbles as he forces the words out from behind clenched teeth. “My whole life, every single person to matter to me at all has lied to me. Mum, Dad, you, and now my own fucking wife—what the fuck do you expect me to do, Sherlock, just pretend it didn’t happen?”

 

            Sherlock averts his eyes and dabs at the baby’s mouth with the cloth. He keeps his body turned. “The Earth does not stop spinning for _feelings_ ,” he says quietly. “Time will not wait for you to catch your breath or get back to your feet.” He turns his head to nestle his face in the baby’s side. The warmth and the soft, milky scent of her are soothing.

 

            “Lovely, Sherlock, just lovely. What’s your advice, then, if the world doesn’t stop? Turn myself into a machine? Hate the world? Shoot up to forget?”

 

            Such a response probably merits a much more contemptuous glare than the one Sherlock gives John, but the look serves its purpose. John crumples, dropping onto the couch heavily and burying his face in his hands. “Oh God. I’m sorry, Sherlock, I’m sorry. Fuck.”

 

            Sherlock drops the burping cloth in his armchair and joins John on the couch, sitting back and rearranging the baby so she’s curled just under his chin. John flops back as well and stares at the ceiling. He looks exhausted, helpless. Diminished.

 

            “If any of that would work,” Sherlock says, breaking a long silence, “I would suggest it.”

 

            John’s eyes close. “What do I do?”

 

            It takes Sherlock a while to come up with an answer. He doesn’t often get questions he can’t answer readily. It’s even more unusual for him to be in a situation where such a question cannot and should not be avoided.

 

            Eventually, he recalls a conversation in the kitchen at home on a hot summer day in the early eighties. The scents of citrus and burnt paper seem fresh in his mind, even now. “My mother always says to take the lemons life gives you and make lemonade.” He remembers the mathematics journal pinned to the wall, the two underscored lines, and the sheets of paper next to it covered in his mother’s precise, elegant numerals, letters, and operations signs. “She also says that it’s wholly unsatisfying advice until one recalls that the process of making lemonade involves cleaving said lemons in half, cramming them over a piece of hard, ridged plastic, and then crushing and wringing the liquid out of them.”

 

            John’s eyes open. He glances over at Sherlock; alarm and reluctant amusement are at war on his face. 

            “If more catharsis is necessary, the citrus oil in the peel is quite volatile.” Sherlock adds. He smiles. Mummy had been very happy indeed to learn that rejection letters and subsequent journal issues with identical corrections from a _man_ were eminently flammable; that had been a merry afternoon indeed.

 

            ***

 

            “This is ridiculous,” John growls at the laptop. Despite having the instructional video playing, he cannot seem to make sense of the material that he’s meant to be tying around himself. Sherlock pauses in his folding to watch John fumble for a moment. “Bloody stupid thing,” John mutters. A louder curse escapes him when, upon letting go of the ends of the wrap, the knot he’d tied comes undone and the entire thing unwraps itself.

 

            Sherlock quickly folds away a soft cotton blanket and takes the wrap from John, taking his place in front of the laptop. He has the sling wrapped and tied off after just one viewing of the instructions. “Do you want me to tie it onto you?” Sherlock asks as John looks on with a mixture of aggravation and envy. “It shouldn’t be any more difficult.”

 

            John shakes his head. “Nope. It’s going to fly apart on me, and I’d rather the baby stay safe.” He goes to fetch his daughter from her basket and hands her to Sherlock. “Figure out how to put her in it, and maybe I’ll let you try to get it on me sometime later, once it’s over its sulk.”

 

            Suspecting that John does not need to be reminded that cotton-spandex blends do not experience emotions, Sherlock accepts the baby and clicks to the ‘Newborn Hold’ step of the instructions. The baby isn’t thrilled about the initial steps of getting situated in the wrap’s material, but as soon as the folds of cloth are cradling her properly (Sherlock resolutely ignores John’s startled look when he kisses the top of her head to ensure that she is sitting high enough in the sling), she settles against him and goes right to sleep.

 

            John puts his folding aside and comes over to see. He’s just tall enough to look into the sling. “She looks cosy,” he remarks quietly.

 

            “So she does,” Sherlock agrees. He tests his mobility, gingerly at first but then with greater confidence. “This is surprisingly comfortable. It may tax your shoulder if you wear it all day, but I doubt you plan to take her to work with you.”

 

            John shakes his head. He looks down at Sherlock’s hands, which have come up automatically to support the baby’s warm bulk at his chest. Sherlock resists the temptation to move them away quickly. “How the hell do you make it look so easy?” he demands. His features and tone indicate that he is speaking humorously, but there is always a seed of something unhappy in jocularity. “Have you done this before? Is there a tiny Sherlock running around somewhere that I just don’t know about?”

 

            The baby’s hands curl around the open placket of Sherlock’s shirt. He is briefly distracted by the miniature perfection of her hands—it is very strange to think that he was such a size at one point. “No,” he replies absently, “not unless Mycroft has been even more alarmingly meddlesome than I previously thought.” He wonders if a series of sketches of the baby’s hands as she grows would be useful somehow. He has to stop the train of thought; the idea that he might need such a thing in his line of work is unexpectedly, intensely abhorrent.

 

            Downstairs, Mrs Hudson greets someone at the door. John’s chin tips up and his back straightens; Sherlock recognises Lestrade’s footfalls immediately.

           

            The DI pauses in the door to the flat when he sees Sherlock. “Er.” His brow furrows as he takes in the purple fabric of the sling and the fuzzy, peach dome of the baby’s head. He doesn’t seem to be quite able to process what he’s seeing (no surprise there, really, but John would not like Sherlock thinking such uncharitable thoughts). “Should I... is that a _baby?_ ”

 

            John drops his face into his palm with an audible smack.

 

            “My God,” Sherlock sighs, “your perspicacity truly knows no lower bounds. Yes, this is a baby, well spotted.” He strides into the sitting room and retrieves his mobile from the desk. He pretends to check his texts as he uses the reflective screen to scour Lestrade for clues. “Unshaven, three different sorts of mud and grit on your pant legs and shoes—three crime scenes, but you wouldn’t be here unless you suspected a connection, so what have you got for me?”

 

            Lestrade looks to John. “You sure you want this in front of the baby?”

 

            John looks at Lestrade, nonplussed. “The baby?”

 

            “You know, talking about... dead people and all that, ‘s a bit not good for little ears?” Lestrade tries. When John merely gives him the same baffled look, he sighs. “Mary’s gonna have—John? Hey, John? Where are you going?”

 

            The door to Sherlock’s bedroom slams behind John hard enough to rattle the glassware on the shelves in the kitchen. Sherlock lets out a long, irritated sigh. So much for the morning’s progress. “Why, dear Detective Inspector, do you think John and his _newborn_ daughter are here, of all places?”

 

            Lestrade goes pale. “Oh. Oh, buggering shite, Sherlock, you can’t be serious. Is she...?”

 

            “Dead,” Sherlock lies. He watches the DI pull out a chair from the desk and take a seat heavily. “Postnatal complications.” He pulls a notepad and biro free of a pile of files and papers, wielding them with a flourish. “You know from experience that John does not appreciate pity. Tell me about your crime scenes.”

 

            Appropriately chastised—Sherlock has heard the stories of John’s less-than-stellar façade of civility whenever Lestrade had tried to visit—the DI shakes his head and withdraws his mobile from his breast pocket. “Three sites, like you said—hedge fund investor on Bankside Pier, a commodities trader in a first-floor flat on Lothbury Street, and a board member of a contracting firm just outside the Museum of London. The reports came in within thirty minutes of each other—museum first, docks second, and then the flat last. Hopkins wanted to call the last one a suicide, but there wasn’t a bit of GSR anywhere on his hands or clothes. If he’d shot himself, we’d see GSR somewhere.” He pulls up a photograph on his mobile and shows it to Sherlock.

 

            “You’re learning,” Sherlock remarks approvingly. He points to the entry wound on the photo. “This was a contact shot—the burn pattern around the entry wound is the muzzle of a small firearm.” Something in the back of his mind sends up a flag at ‘small firearm’. “You said there was no discharge residue whatsoever?”

 

            Lestrade shakes his head. “Not a bit. They’re related, Sherlock, all three of the deaths—we’ve retrieved the bullets and they’re all from the same weapon.”

 

            “Model?” Sherlock asks.

 

            When Lestrade answers, “Beretta 950,” the little flag in the back of Sherlock’s mind glints with a cold, familiar nickel finish. He’s done writing the name before Lestrade even finishes saying it.

 

            “Are the bodies in the morgue?”

 

            Lestrade nods. “They’re with Molly. She’ll hold them as long as she can, Sherlock, but you’ve got to be quick—the press are going to catch wind of this, and it won't be pretty.”

 

            Sherlock nods and stands, handing Lestrade his mobile. “Call my brother and give him the details of the case. I will be at Bart’s as soon as possible.”

 

            ***

 

            John is lying on Sherlock’s bed. The lights are off, but the feeble daylight through his window is enough to illuminate the miserable curl of John’s body beneath the duvet. Sherlock stands in the doorway, hands over the baby for lack of a better place to put them. “Lestrade has a triple homicide. The bodies are at the morgue.”

 

            “And?” John grunts. His voice creaks.

 

            Sherlock contemplates entering the room, but the doorway seems like the safest place to be at the moment. “I am going to the morgue to look at the bodies, John.”

 

            “So?”

 

            Sherlock sighs. “I am wearing your daughter, John, and though my hands are free, I do not think that ‘newborn infant’ is appropriate laboratory dress.”

 

            John uncovers his head and meets Sherlock’s gaze with his own reddened one. Sherlock is alarmed by the sight of moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes. “I still don't understand why you’re doing this,” John croaks.

 

            His first step into the room isn’t met with any negative responses, so Sherlock takes a few more and stops beside the bed. “I fail to see why,” he replies evenly, quietly.

 

            “You’re... _you._ ” Before Sherlock can make a face at that truly dreadful argument, John presses on. “You’re Sherlock Holmes and the game is on. My wife’s out there running a criminal fucking empire, parts of said criminal empire want us dead, and yet you’re in here making bottles and changing nappies and _talking to the baby_. You’re wearing a bloody Boba Wrap, for fuck’s sake, and paying attention to _safety_ —why are you doing this, and when are you going to get bored and throw us out?”

 

            Sherlock stares into John’s eyes, shocked. “Why would I do that?”

 

            “That’s what people _do_ ,” John replies, quiet and truthful.

 

            The bed creaks as Sherlock slowly lowers his weight to the mattress. Hearing those words echoed to him, it’s as if something heavy and cold has become trapped between his lungs. This particular vintage of resignation—this reluctant acceptance of a seemingly unbreakable trend in the things other people do—is all too familiar to Sherlock, even twenty years after moving past it. People lie. People take advantage until there’s nothing left to take. People leave wounds. People leave.

 

            Sherlock lets out a slow huff. “I am not people.” He turns and looks down at John, holding his gaze. “You belong here, John.” This is objective fact, as far as Sherlock is concerned. All of his belongings are placed and arranged to his liking, yet it’s John’s presence that adds some unquantifiable aspect to 221B that makes it more than merely a place to sleep uninterrupted when the whim takes him. In John’s absence, his armchair’s presence had so pointedly highlighted the lack of John in the flat that Sherlock had quickly been forced to move it upstairs in the hopes that he would be able to focus properly again (it hadn’t worked as well as he’d liked). He isn’t sure how to convey this to John without seeming disgustingly maudlin. “You... this is your _home._ ”

 

            It takes a while, but when John finally responds—when he finally shifts just enough that he seems to be curled around Sherlock rather than himself—it feels like a victory.


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's spring break here and the game is on! I'm going to Chicago tomorrow to see my best friend. Am I strange for being *ridiculously excited* about riding the train out to his suburb? I really like trains...
> 
> I can't thank everyone enough for the supportive comments and kudos-- I really hope that my first foray into this sort of genre continues to be enjoyable for you! 
> 
> Unbetaed, so any feedback is highly appreciated. I've tried to do as much research as possible on ballistics, the weapon, and some of Sherlock's observations; between my own knowledge of physics and that, I'm hoping it's amounted to something believable (even if some of the marksmanship necessary is stretching the realm of the feasible just a bit).

            “Gerald Ballinger, Marcus McConn, and Samuel Orson,” Molly says, indicating each body. She levels disbelieving looks at John, the baby, Lestrade, and Sherlock, apparently shocked that any of them would allow the infant’s presence in the morgue. When no one responds to the pointed looks, she sighs and gestures to the box of gloves resignedly. “They’re all yours.”

 

            Lestrade stands off to the side next to John, who has the messenger bag of baby equipment over his right shoulder and the three victim profiles in his left hand. Sherlock prowls between the examination tables and works his hands into a pair of nitrile gloves. “This one,” he says, pausing to flip the oldest victim’s toe tag up. “Ballinger.”

 

            Papers rustle as John finds the relevant page in the files. “Shot on Bankside Pier at ten thirty yesterday morning,” he reports. “Witness said he was there with his wife and saw her off on the ferry, then sat down to watch the boat go. She didn’t see a flash, but she heard a pop and saw Ballinger’s head jerk back—when she spotted the blood, she called police.” He pages through the file some more. “The police didn’t catch up with the ferry until nearly two hours later. They couldn’t find any GSR when they brought in a dog to check.”

 

            Sherlock makes a noise of disgust. “Of course not.” He confirms Molly’s estimate of the angle of entry. “No exit wound—shot from a distance.” He prods at the deformed bullet in the tray next to Ballinger’s head, but stops when he sees John’s head make a fractional, questioning turn. “John?”

 

            John’s heels click on the linoleum floor as he takes Sherlock’s place at the head of the examination table, turning himself slightly so he can gaze down at the bullet without bending to see past the baby at his chest. “Twenty-two LR hollow point,” he says crisply, hints of Captain Watson evident in his tone. “Took a few rounds just like that out of an American kid after a raid on a Taliban chief’s complex.” He taps a page in the file and looks up at Sherlock. “The weapon’s a Beretta 950, Sherlock—it’s accurate for such a little thing, but it’s not powerful. You’re looking at a range of fifteen metres at the outside to get that sort of deformation and penetration.”

 

            “Noted, thank you,” Sherlock replies, voice unperturbed despite the sudden but not entirely unexpected leap his heart rate has taken. The half-second it takes to jolt his mind back into gear and turn to the next body feels like an eternity. “Moving on.”

 

            Having John accompany him on cases is vital—the doctor is an excellent sounding board and a rich resource of medical information—but the fits of tachycardia that have started up recently in response to John’s more luminous moments are beginning to get on Sherlock’s nerves.

 

            “Samuel Orson,” John says, bringing Sherlock’s attention back to the Work. He tucks a hand under the baby and holds her close when she gives a small, fussy grunt. “Shot at ten forty-one, just outside the entrance to the Museum of London, right in the middle of a mobile conversation. Witnesses moved the body, so the point of origin of the shot was lost.”

 

            Sherlock lets out a rumbling ‘hmmm’ as he examines the entry wound. The entrance to the Museum sits above street level on the Barbican highwalk—given the angle of entry (a downward incline from entry to rest point), there’s no way Mary was on street level when she made the kill. The weapon rules out sites further away than the outer buildings of the Rotunda (more for reasons of power than accuracy—between the general consensus between John and the Internet that the 950 is surprisingly accurate for such a little thing and his firsthand experience with Mary’s keen marksmanship, he doubts distance is any major hindrance to her precision), and the downward angle of entry rules out equal footing. “Rooftop position,” he says. The bullet in the tray is not quite as deformed as the other—Mary was more distant for this kill than the first. “Not that that narrows it down a great deal—at least four buildings are tall enough and at the right angle relative to the entrance to be possible sites.”

 

            Lestrade sighs. “Lovely.”

 

            “The report says that he was on his mobile when he was shot.” John pages through Orson’s file and draws a fingertip down one page. “Here. Frederick Riesch, coworker.”

 

            Sherlock scribbles the name into his notebook—if Riesch is a part of the empire as well, he’s been made keenly aware that _someone_ is making a move. Whether or not he connects it to Mary is irrelevant; Sherlock needs to get in contact with the man as soon as possible, before Riesch goes to ground or gets removed as well. He has John read off the mobile number and scribbles it into his notebook next to the man’s name. “We’ll have to get in contact with him soon. Now, the third body?”

 

            “Marcus McConn, shot sometime just before ten fifty-eight, twenty-six years old.” John replies. He starts to shake his head sadly, then stops and furrows his brow when something on the body catches his eye. “That’s. Huh. Pistol bite.” He flips through McConn’s file, the expression of puzzlement on his face becoming increasingly evident. “Why does he have pistol bite if he wasn’t in the military?”

 

            Sherlock has already seized McConn’s dominant hand (the right) and brought it up for close examination. Lestrade and Molly sidle closer, leaning in to see the wound themselves. “Not even three months old, I’d say,” Molly ventures, biting her lower lip. “Maybe he knew the killer was going to come for him soon?”

 

            Lestrade nods. “Good idea, Molly!” At that, Molly’s cheeks blaze red. She looks startled. “I’ll go over his credit card records and his mobile log again.”

 

            “Don’t bother,” Sherlock scoffs from behind the file. He ignores John’s sigh—flirting by way of wild hypotheses will not be tolerated when there is serious casework to be done. “He could have visited a friend in the United States. Furthermore, this is a professional at work. Consider the efficiency! Three kills in half an hour over such a distance means planning—lots of it—and some other connection between the three that would necessitate their immediate removal. They’re not high enough on the totem pole to have heard whispers of any sort of internal cleanup, or they’d have gone to ground or sought witness protection long ago. No, he was not expecting to be killed, not until the killer was in his flat with the gun to his head.”

 

            Lestrade and Molly exchange chastised glances and watch as Sherlock goes back and examines the hands of the other two victims.

 

            John makes a puzzled sound. “Sherlock?”

 

            “What is it, Jo—oh! Ballinger is ex-military.” Taken together, old scars from knives and shallow gunshot wounds, scarring from poryphyria cutanea tarda, early signs of cirrhosis, and chloracne on a man of Ballinger’s age are reliable indicators of frontline participation in Vietnam. The man’s hands are webbed with old scars, but his palms, the medial pad of his index finger, and the thenar region are well callused. Leaning in, Sherlock finds that his fingernails and cuticles smell faintly of gun oil. “Tell Lestrade to have his flat searched. Gun oil on his hands and well-maintained calluses—if he hasn’t got weapons there, someone he knows does have them.”

 

            John rolls his eyes as Lestrade scrambles for his mobile. “Sherlock, that’s wonderful, but look at this. If this was a contact shot, where’s the exit wound?”

 

            Sherlock’s head snaps up, abandoning the old pistol-bite scars and dearth of calluses on Orson’s left hand; he locks gazes with John and stalks across the morgue. “Say that again.”

 

            John looks down at McConn’s body, then back up at Sherlock. His blue eyes (dilated pupils, odd) twinkle with a mixture of apprehension and anticipation—he knows he’s caught Sherlock’s attention and he thinks he’s noticed something important (he has), but he’s cautious enough to be wary of a sharp reprimand. “If he was shot closely enough to leave a burn, where is the exit wound?”

 

            The noise that leaves Sherlock’s throat must be startling; John’s eyes go wide and Molly makes an odd little sound. “John. John, you _magnificent_ man, _brilliant!_ ” He drops to a crouch near the body and shakes open the file—yes, yes! An _upward_ angle of entry! “He was shot from below!” he hisses victoriously. He straightens and whirls in the same motion, rounding on Lestrade. “Was there an open window at the scene?! You must remember!”

 

            “Er, well, yes, there was, he was next to the... but how did the burn get there if...?”  


            The shot had been terrifyingly precise, but it’s not quite precise enough: another examination of the entry wound and the burn and it’s obvious that the entry wound isn’t centered in the burn, the way it would be if the gun had actually been against McConn’s temple in such a way as to leave the imprint it did. “It’s well-established that our killer is a sharpshooter, but the burn—Molly, was the burn inflicted post-mortem?”

 

            Molly shakes her head. Sherlock dives back into the file. “Aha! One mobile phone with half of a number dialed.” There are two contacts that the half-number could have been going out to—Ralph Adams or Randall McLoskey. “He was going to live, but he made the mistake of starting to place a call and then looking out the window to see if his visitor was well and truly gone.”

 

            “Oops,” John says under his breath. Lestrade huffs out a laugh; Molly’s caught between mortification and amusement.

 

            “Oops indeed, John,” Sherlock echoes warmly, taking the messenger bag from John and tucking the files into it before slinging it over his own shoulder. “Come. Mr Riesch may be able to shed light on things; we simply have to reach him quickly enough.”

 

            ***

 

            John looks surprised when Sherlock turns and strides into a small deli after they get off the tube on the way to Riesch’s place of work. “Are you... actually eating?” John asks as Sherlock queues to make an order.

 

            “Of course not. You’re going to eat, and I’m going to contact Riesch.” When they reach the cash register, the woman gives John a flattering, inviting look and all but coos at him and the baby as she takes his order. The only thing that prevents Sherlock from putting a stop to it by informing her about her habitual infidelity is John very pointedly standing on his left foot; this, conveniently, places John close enough to Sherlock that the woman interprets it wrongly and ceases her flirtation. John pays, and Sherlock shoots her a smug look as they leave for their table.

           

            The chairs are cheap and wobbly, the tabletops are vaguely sticky, and the restaurant smells strongly of pickles and sliced meat. John sits gingerly, adjusting the baby as he goes, and heaves a long sigh. “This is Mary’s work, isn’t it?” He’s obviously aware that he’s right, but his expression is such an odd mix of resignation, frustration, and needing to know that Sherlock can only nod.

 

            “It is.”

 

            John huffs out a breathy, dry laugh. “Three kills in half an hour—she really knows her stuff, doesn’t she?” He shakes his head and looks down at the baby, mouth twisted in a bitter, sad smile. “Never was shy about doing what needed to be done.”

 

            Sherlock isn’t sure how to respond. “The weapon she used was a signal. She needs us to be aware of these three and anyone they’re connected to—she wouldn’t remove them without good reason.”

 

            “Hence the call to Riesch,” John sighs. “You think he’s involved somehow?”

 

            “We’ll find out,” Sherlock answers, retrieving his mobile. He dials the number from his notebook and puts the phone to his ear.

 

            John’s sandwich arrives just as Riesch answers his phone. “Hello?” Tenor, soft-spoken but not timid, weak Liverpudlian accent. “Who’s this?”

 

            “Uh, hi, this is... er, this is Ben," Sherlock stammers. "I’m... my friend is missing, we were going to meet for lunch but he wasn’t th-there, he always shows up. When I called, the police answered and they, um, they wouldn't tell me anything.” At Sherlock’s pitched-up and tremulous voice, John smiles around his sandwich and shakes his head in fond resignation.

 

            The silence on the other end of the line is short but tense. “How did you get this number?” Riesch asks. “Did someone refer you to me?” He’s not unkind, but the sympathy rings false to Sherlock’s keen ear.

 

            “Oh! I kept asking the police to talk to me, but I think I, er, I think I made them mad, so they sent me to this weird bloke in some old flat on Baker Street. H-he, uh, told me to call you before, um, before he kicked me out.” _He’s asking how I got his number. Nervous._ Sherlock writes in his notebook, turning it so John can see.

 

            Riesch chuckles. “Sherlock Holmes, was it? He would know.” It’s subtle, but Riesch sounds like someone whose expectations have been confirmed. “Listen, Ben. Sam... he got into some sketchy business with Russian investors. I’d been trying to talk him out of it for weeks, but you know how it is, all that oil money and whatnot.” This isn’t untrue, Sherlock notes—he brings his notebook back and scribbles in a memo about a Russian connection. “Earlier this morning, he’d called me to say he was on the brink of a huge deal with some bloke named Moroz. Ivan Moroz, I think it was, but this deal was just too good to be real. I told him to watch himself, and sure enough, when he called me again after the meeting, he... oh God, they shot him, he was on the phone with me when they did it.”

 

            Riesch’s distress is played up, but he’s telling the truth, so far as Sherlock can hear. He notes ‘Ivan Moroz’ in his Moleskine as he makes an appropriately shocked and horrified sound. “No. Sam’s... he’s... he’s d-dead?”

 

            “I’m afraid so, kiddo. The police won’t talk because it’s an ongoing investigation, right? Holmes never did follow the same rules; they probably sent you to him so you could... you know, get some closure.”

 

            The rest of the conversation is mostly ‘Ben’ alternately voicing devastated disbelief and inquiring about plans and dates for any funeral services (Riesch doesn’t know anything, but promises to call him back with information when he gets it). John looks on with that same amused smile, working through his sandwich and tea with his left hand as the right slides soothingly up and down the baby’s back. When Sherlock finally rings off, John lets out a soft laugh. “You’d be sitting on a pile of Baftas and Oscars if you’d gone into acting,” he remarks.

 

            Sherlock snorts. “Given the way most celebrities conduct themselves, I certainly wouldn’t be regarded as being terribly odd. Perhaps I should consider it.”

 

            “Just don’t jump on any couches or embrace Scientology and you’ll be fine,” John replies, finishing his tea. He laughs at Sherlock’s blank look. “Nevermind that. Where are we going next?”

 

            Thankful to be back in territory he understands, Sherlock shows John the page with ‘Ivan Moroz’ written on it as they leave. “Mycroft owes me a favour,” he says. He hails a cab, but it drives by. “Damn. Once we have a taxi, we’ll go visit him and see what we can dig up on this Russian.”

 

            Beside him, John goes strangely still and quiet, his hand moving from the baby’s back to cup her head protectively. “Sherlock,” he murmurs as Sherlock successfully hails a cab. “Sherlock, there’s someone photographing us from the coffeehouse across the road.”

 

            Sherlock gets a look as he opens the cab door.

 

            There, seated in the window, is a plain-faced man with a camera and dark sunglasses. The lens is aimed directly at them.


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, I am *terribly* sorry about being late! Chicago was utterly fantastic-- if you get the chance to go to a live Welcome to Night Vale show, DO IT-- but between all the running around I did up north and all of my students running me ragged over these past two days, it's been one big game of 'find fifteen minutes to write half a paragraph I'll probably hate and erase anyway'. Frankly, I'm still unhappy with it. :(
> 
> Second, I want to thank everyone for their kind words and support. I really hope things continue to meet your expectations-- not a lot happens in this chapter, but it's always quiet before everything goes to hell, isn't it?
> 
> Still unbetaed and un-Britpicked. Please let me know if you spot anything!

          As a boy, Sherlock once made the mistake of placing a flask full of highly purified water into the microwave and heating it. He’d been baffled when, upon removing the flask, the water didn’t appear to have boiled at all. In his effort to understand why the glass was hot but the water was apparently not, he’d put a metal stirring rod into the flask. The water had leapt to violent life, hissing and spouting out of the flask and all over his hand; thirty-one years later, some of the scarring is still faintly visible over the meat of his thumb.

 

            Having had such a learning experience with superheating, Sherlock recognises the too-still calm that rules John as he gets into the taxi. He says nothing when John tells the cabbie to go to Baker Street instead of the Diogenes Club, he doesn’t comment on John’s hypervigilance during the drive itself, and he absolutely does not dodge paying the cabbie like he normally would. When they disembark, he quickly scans Baker Street for any sign of unwelcome watchers (there are none, but he doubts he’d mention it even if he did see someone; it wouldn’t do to risk John shooting people in plain sight) and precedes John into the flat, ensuring that everything is normal before beckoning him in.

 

            John seems somewhat reassured by the overtures, but the rigidity doesn’t leave his bearing until Sherlock closes the blinds and shuts the door. “Christ,” he gasps, lowering himself into his armchair gingerly. He drops shaky hands over his face. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

 

            Given the events of the past few days, Sherlock cannot blame John for some distress, but the sheer level of anxiety the photographer has inspired seems extreme. “John, it’s likely that he was simply a paparazzo. We are, after all, rather well-known.”

 

            John lifts his hands to throw an ugly look at the closed windows. “That’s just as bad,” he snarls. His hands slide down his face and curve over the baby as if to shield her. “They’re going to take those pictures and post them on the Internet, Sherlock, don’t deny it. That’s going to be _my baby_ out there for any weirdo to see, that’s going to be _our fucking lives_ under scrutiny from everyone and their mum, and it’s not going to be the sort where they just point and laugh from the safety of their bloody armchairs. Sherlock, if it gets bad enough, _they could try to take her away from us._ ”

 

            Sherlock blinks. “What?”

 

            John sets his jaw; his expression is dangerously flat, but his eyes flash with helpless fury. “They’re going to look at _every_ wild claim, Sherlock. You know what they did to you back when Mor... when that _bastard_ threw you to the wolves. You know how eagerly they snapped up Janine’s story. We can fight it, we can try to talk with the local authorities when they send someone to investigate, but if we can’t...” John pauses and licks his lips, blinking and looking away briefly. The dim light doesn’t hide the glint of wetness at the corners of John’s eyes. “If we can’t dispel every last doubt, they’re going to take her away.”

 

            Sherlock sits down heavily.

 

            Generally speaking, Sherlock could care less about the papers and what they say about him—the media peddles all sorts of vicious libel on a regular basis, so why bother? He’s less indifferent when the papers decide to go after John, but John is an adult and fully capable of seeking both redress and restraint from offending parties. Ostensibly, the baby is under both of their protection and therefore as immune from the media’s ridiculous fabrications and hyperbole as they choose to make her.

 

            Hearing that the lies and exaggerations his detractors so love to throw around could result in the baby being removed from John’s care, something turns over sickeningly in his gut. It’s a choice between sending John away with the baby—sending him somewhere where Sherlock won’t be right there to watch over them—or keeping John close and risking the ensuing media circus and child protection inquest taking away the only part of John’s family he has left.

 

            There’s nothing else for it. Sherlock gets out his mobile and dials his brother.

 

            “Baby brother. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

 

            “I want a media blackout on the baby,” Sherlock says. Forgoing the usual ritual of sibling sniping should make the urgency of the situation clear; very, very few circumstances are dire enough to keep Sherlock from taking the piss.

 

            Mycroft sighs, but it’s his sigh of resigned acquiescence rather than any of the others. “I understand. I cannot make promises, but I will do what I can. Shall I ask Mary for assistance?”

 

            “No,” Sherlock replies after a mere moment of thought. “She’ll refuse, of course—she’s trying to avoid getting John and the baby targeted, not invite it. Inform her, yes, but do not ask her for help.”

 

            Muffled conversation comes from the other end of the connection. “The blackout may take time, Sherlock. The media are not as easy to influence as one might imagine, particularly when it means blocking a profitable story. In the meantime, is there anything else?”

 

            Sherlock remembers the notebook in his pocket. Pulling it out, he flips to the page of notes he’d taken earlier today. “Ivan Moroz, Randall McLoskey, and Ralph Adams. The last two have mobile numbers.” He rattles off the digits on the page, then logs in to his laptop and searches the documents on the flash drive Mary had given him. “The information Mary gave me only confirms that Adams is involved with her syndicate. I need more, particularly on Moroz. He’s Russian, has something to do with oil money.”

 

            “I will see what I can uncover,” Mycroft confirms. “Good luck, and be careful. Mary did not exaggerate the situation.”

 

            ***

 

            “Coo-ee, boys!” Mrs Hudson calls as she bumps the kitchen door open with her good hip.

 

            Faster than Sherlock can follow, John leaps out of his chair, violently upending his bowl of palak paneer and startling the baby awake. He stares at Mrs Hudson and Lestrade standing in the kitchen door, hand halfway behind his back to a gun that isn’t there, as Sherlock sits with splatters of cheese and pureed spinach dripping down one cheek.

 

            Mrs Hudson looks like she can’t decide whether she’s more surprised by John’s reaction or the wailing baby in the basket next to Sherlock. Lestrade has his palms up and his chin down in the universal ‘easy there’ posture; he’s watching John’s hand just as closely as John is watching him.

 

            “Save me from people who cannot be bothered to _announce themselves reasonably_ ,” Sherlock sighs crossly as he wipes away the palak paneer on his cheek with his napkin. He leans down and extricates the baby from her basket; she cries and fusses and complains until he’s got her snug against his chest, little head tucked just under his chin. “Thank you, Mrs Hudson. John, for God's sake, sit _down_. Detective Inspector, hello. Do you have a lead?”

 

            Lestrade doesn’t enter the kitchen until John sits down again, and even then he takes a chair that puts the table and Sherlock’s microscope between himself and John. “No.” He sets his mobile on the table—Sherlock recognises his brother’s number-- and folds his arms, looking expectantly at John and Sherlock. “You need to tell me what’s going on.”

           

            “Nothing’s going on,” John retorts, too quickly. He bristles when Lestrade gives him an exasperated look.

 

            Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Mary left.” He ignores John’s hissed rebuke and holds up a hand to forestall any further protests. “John, _enough_. Mycroft trusts him.”

 

            John looks like he might put up a fight for a moment or so. He relents under Sherlock’s insistent glare, however, and turns on Lestrade instead, leaning forward menacingly. “If you put my daughter in danger by saying something you shouldn’t, Greg...”

 

        Lestrade leans back a bit. “Got it.”

 

        That seems to satisfy John, but Sherlock needs to be sure. "Are you quite finished?"

 

         John nods.

 

         " _Thank_ you," Sherlock sighs exasperatedly. He looks to Lestrade and picks up where he left off. "Essentially, Mary Morstan was both counselor and underboss in Jim Moriarty’s syndicate—she advised, represented him when he didn’t want to show his face, and carried out his orders in his place. I suspect she was formerly with the CIA or some other high-level American agency, but Jim had something on her and forced her to do his wetwork. Eventually, she was in deep enough that he could trust her as a protégé as well as...”

 

            The story doesn’t take long to tell—five minutes at most, perhaps—but by the end of it, Lestrade looks dazed and John has relocated to the couch once again. He's taken the baby with him this time, however; when Sherlock gets up to check on them after he finishes briefing Lestrade, he finds John on his back with the baby sprawled atop his chest, each of her tiny hands wrapped tight around his index fingers. He's speaking to her in a low, affectionate tone and she seems to be listening as attentively as her three days allow.

 

            Pleased to see John interacting instead of withdrawing, Sherlock returns to the kitchen, where the DI still sits pale and openmouthed. “Bloody hell,” Lestrade breathes after a long moment. “And those three shootings—they’re hers?”

 

            Sherlock nods. “They are.”

 

            “Not the Russians?”

 

            “Nope,” Sherlock confirms, popping the ‘P’ at the end of the word definitively. “Bit too direct, really—if the Russians were going to take someone out, they’d make it look like an accident. They won’t risk souring diplomatic ties unless it’s ordered from the very top.”

 

           Lestrade groans and runs a hand over his face. “They’re solved, then—all three of them?"

 

         "Tied with a bow."

 

         "They're solved, but we can’t make arrests or even announce a suspect?"

 

         "Precisely."

 

         "Fuck." The DI's forehead impacts the table in unison with his curse.

 

         “A necessary evil, unfortunately,” Sherlock agrees. “Look into the ballistics report, start comparing it to weapons used in past cold cases. Better yet, put your most incompetent intern on it—we both know that the Yard’s progress on converting old case files to digital is behind schedule, and even I got lost in the stacks early on.” He steeples his fingers thoughtfully and considers the variables. “Get in contact with Mycroft; he can help you follow up on Moroz without creating a political firestorm.”

 

         That gets a laugh from Lestrade. “Jesus, are we lucky that you’re on our side,” he chuckles, shaking his head in affectionate disbelief. He glances toward the sitting room with a bit of concern, then leans in and murmurs, “You going to be all right?”

 

         “John is not a danger to me or to his daughter,” Sherlock replies, equally quietly. “To others? Perhaps, but I will do my best to mitigate that.”

 

         “Is he armed?”

 

           Sherlock shakes his head once. He’s been checking on the gun every six hours, carefully lifting the floorboard beneath his bed and examining the dust on the Upmann cigar box—so far, gun and box have remained undisturbed since he placed them there.

 

            Lestrade looks relieved. “Right. I’ll... go put Jones on the cold cases, then.” He steps hesitantly toward the sitting room, then changes his mind and takes his leave through the kitchen door.

 

            Once the table is clean and the leftovers are packed away, Sherlock checks in on John again. The doctor is still stretched out on the couch, head propped up on a pillow and the baby asleep atop his chest; the only sign that he’s awake is the tender stroke of his fingers over her fuzzy head.

 

            John glances up at Sherlock when he sits on the coffee table. “I’m a fucking worthless dad,” he murmurs. He toys with the fine, colorless hair on his daughter’s head, deft fingers trailing lovingly over the soft indentation of her anterior fontanelle. “Scaring her awake, hiding on the sofa every time someone mentions her mother, haven’t even named her yet... they wouldn’t be wrong to take her away, give her to a mum and a dad who’ll love her like she deserves.” He runs one fingertip over her cheek; she smacks her lips and wiggles her tongue in her sleep. “God, she’s so beautiful.”

 

            Sherlock isn’t sure what to say. Subjectively speaking, John deserves his daughter simply by dint of being John Watson; everything to do with Mary only confirms this fact. Objectively speaking, John really has been less than stellar as a parent. However, also objectively speaking, another abandonment by someone he trusts almost certainly gives him considerable latitude for behaviour that would typically be regarded as Not Good. Sherlock knows John prefers his honest opinion to whatever platitudes common society might recommend he give, so he tries to reformulate his thoughts in a way that will convey his point properly. “You have been hurt.” He steeples his fingers in front of his lips to keep his hands occupied. He’s come to understand hurt on some rudimentary level over the past year, and it makes him uncomfortable to talk about it. “I... admit I was a part of that, but this hurt is... not the same, perhaps. I am neither your wife nor the mother of your newborn child.”

 

         At that, John chuckles. “Jesus, isn't that a thought?"

 

         Sherlock snorts. "It'd ruin my figure, John. Honestly." He grins as John's chuckles turn into that high pitched giggle that Sherlock can never quite comprehend as belonging to an ex-soldier. Soon, though, he presses on-- he has an argument to make. "The point is, John, you are grieving, and as I am given to understand them, even the simplest grieving practices excuse many typically inexcusable behaviours that occur proximate to the traumatic event.”

 

          Shrugging, John gives Sherlock a lopsided smile. “Suppose they do. Doesn’t excuse it, in my mind.” He looks down at his daughter and traces the tiny, curled shell of her ear. “I’m her dad. I’m meant to care for her no matter what happens.” Shaking his head, John curls in to place a kiss atop the baby’s crown. “Mary left us behind—it’s not like she died. What does it say about me as a father that I haven’t got past it and done my job?”

 

         “Nothing,” Sherlock says, because it’s true—the scar between his fifth and sixth ribs is proof of the pain and incapacitation that comes with betrayal. He could not be considered weak because he struggled to function after being shot; it follows, then, that John cannot and should not be considered weak because he is struggling to function after being betrayed and dealt an emotional blow as crippling as any bullet wound. He places his hand over John’s where it rests on the baby. “It says nothing at all.”

 

         John heaves a long, tired sigh. “God, I hope you’re right.”

 

         The baby grunts, almost as if in agreement.

 

         Atop her back, John's fingertips find their way between Sherlock’s and stay.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woohoo, (somewhat) on time this week!
> 
> First off, warnings: insensitivity about PTSD, brief mentions of suicide, being followed. 
> 
> Second: To everyone who's commented and/or left kudos-- you're marvellous human beings and you should feel good about yourselves. Thank you so much for your support! 
> 
> Still unbetaed and un-Britpicked. Constructive criticism and mentions of typos or other errors are deeply, deeply appreciated.

            John wakes up just as Sherlock finishes the baby’s morning feed (06:44, sixteen point one millilitres). He shuffles into the kitchen slowly but not stiffly; as he roots through cabinets and the refrigerator, his movements are simply those of a tired man still struggling to achieve something resembling wakefulness.

 

            No nightmares, then. Unexpected, but good. “Hello, John.”

 

            John grunts, lifts a hand, and flops it in a half-hearted approximation of a greeting. He squints into a cereal box with sleepy suspicion and sighs. “No food in.”

 

            “Is there ever?” Sherlock quips. Over his shoulder, the baby lets out a burp.

 

            A half-loaf of bread John finds under the sink is rejected and binned; Sherlock is quite sad to see such a lushly verdant example of penicillium mould treated so dismissively. “You’ve got to have something in. When was the last time you did the shopping?” John finishes his search of the cabinets, then doubles back to the bin and peers in with morbid fascination. “Jesus. Another day under the sink and it’d be barking at me.”

 

            Sherlock frowns. “It’s penicillium, John. A fungus.”

 

            John rolls his eyes and sighs, “It’s a joke, Sherlock.” He pads back down the hallway to Sherlock’s room and shuts the door; shortly thereafter, he emerges in his street clothes. “I’m going to do the shopping. Back in a mo.”

 

            Surprised, Sherlock watches John tug his coat on and cross the room to the windows to check the weather. “You’re going out.” He evaluates John’s bearing, searching for any sign of hypervigilance or tension.

 

            The scrutiny doesn’t escape John’s notice. He stops and angles an exasperated stare up at Sherlock, running his tongue over the edge of his upper incisiors and rolling the fingers of his left fist as he considers his response. At length, he settles for snapping, “I’ll be fine, thanks,” dropping a brief but gentle kiss on the baby’s cheek, and marching back across the room to the door, back straight and jaw set. He doesn’t quite slam the door when he departs, but it’s a near thing.

 

            Sherlock goes to the window and lifts the curtain aside just enough to see John briskly strolling southward on Baker Street.

 

            He can’t help wondering what it is that people have said to John to make such a reaction his automatic response to someone showing concern.

 

            ***

 

            Two blocks.

 

            Two blocks—up to the intersection of Baker Street and Marylebone—and John is completely failing to hold on to his righteous anger over the way Sherlock had looked at him.

 

            It’s mostly because Sherlock _hadn’t_ been looking at him _that_ way _,_ really.

 

            ***

 

            _“Yer goin’ out?” Harry demands from the couch, her Prada pumps propped up on the glass coffee table. She already has a beer bottle in hand. It’s cheap, acrid, and incongruous against the expensive leather furniture and Harry’s rumpled designer dress. “Johnny, y’ can’t go out there.” She looks about as concerned as a person can whilst inebriated at half past noon._

_John furrows his brow. “I want lunch, Harry, and you haven’t done the shopping.”_

_“Did so,” Harry slurs. She grins sloppily and shows him the bottle. Its mates are in the refrigerator, all thirteen of them. A pair of empties sits on the coffee table, one lies on its side in the kitchen sink, and one was in the bin in the loo, which still smelt faintly of sick as of this morning._

_There had been a time when John would have argued with Harry, would have played his part. Would have said things like ‘you shouldn’t do this to yourself, Harry,’ or maybe ‘that’s enough, you’ve had enough, we’re going home’. He would have dumped the bottles in the sink and called up the rehabilitation clinic. That sort of thing._

_Now, though? Now, when he’s barely survived after weeks of surgeries and infection and more surgeries, when he’s got nothing left of everything he built for himself in uni, when all of his plans for his life have vanished into haze? Now, not so much. He barely has the energy to feed himself most days, never mind manage his sister's belligerent alcoholism._

_He notices Harry looking at him concernedly again. “Y’see, Johnny, that’s just the thing. Y’got that look on yer face.”_

_“What look?”_

_Harry shrugs. “Y’knoww, th’ army look. Like yer gonna go offta war. Y’can’t go out t’war at Tesco, Johnny, yer... yer gonna hurt someone.”_

_John knows he should drop it, should just leave and not engage, but something in him rears up and snarls at the implication that he’s a danger to anyone because he was in the military. “Come again?”_

_“’S that... that thing, the PS... the PTSD thing, innit? Read about it in the papers. You lot come home and it’s like, someone’s car backfires and y’freak out, right? Don’ wanna hafta bail yer arse outta jail. Expensive shit, that.”_

_John signs for the bedsit not three hours later._

_***_

            No, it hadn’t been that look.

 

            The problem was, it hadn’t been the _other_ look, either.

  
  
            ***

 

            _“Consider going out a bit, making friends,” Doctor Geraldine Villiet says gently, as if to a shy animal or a small child. “Participating in activities like hiking, art, and social nights is important for readjusting.” Jowly, pallid, hunched, and bespectacled, she seems to be the die by which every doddering, over-involved, elderly widow is pressed, right down to the too-proximate pointing and unsolicited life prescriptions._

_John stares out the window of the office, unwilling and unable to look any longer at the faded, dusty spines of outdated self-help books or framed prints of unsettling, off-pink peonies._

_“John?”_

_Against his better judgement, he turns. “Yes?”_

_Jesus, the fucking things are **everywhere**. Peonies on the notepad. Peonies on the plastic barrels of her pens. Peonies on her upholstery, a cheap fabric peony pinned to her lumpy pink jumper, even a cross-stiched peony on the goddamn door hanger. Peonies, peonies, peonies, in every hue and shade of not-quite-pink imaginable. John has clearly died and gone to Hell._

_Villiet looks at him like she knows something, like she’s some sort of worried, beneficent saviour ready to bestow her healing touch upon the despondent. “John, it won’t solve anything.”_

_The confusion that causes is just enough to break the borderline-mesmeric horror of not-pink peonies. "What?"_

_“It’s not a solution, John. I know things hurt—I know it’s so hard to readjust, to fit in, to forget everything you’ve had to see—but ending your life isn’t the answer.”_

_John stares outright. “I’m not suicidal.” It’s true. He doesn’t want to die—he just wants to be able to **live**_ _again. “Really. I’m not.”_

_Villiet looks at him pityingly. She’s clearly made up her mind, dearth of supporting evidence be damned. “John, it’s nothing to be ashamed of—”_

_Deciding whether to laugh, cry, or scream is too difficult, so John opts for getting up and leaving the peony-infested office immediately. A few phone calls later, he’s scheduled to meet with Doctor Ella Thompson the following Wednesday._

_Thankfully, the peonies do not feature in any of his dreams, good or bad._

_***_

            No, Sherlock’s expression certainly hadn’t been that sort—he might fancy himself above the rest of humanity, but he’d sooner burst into flames than aggressively pitied anyone.

 

            John sighs as he waits at the Marylebone crosswalk. Knowing Sherlock, he’s probably making some sort of spreadsheet of John’s behaviour over the past three days, cataloguing all of the novel behaviours before determining their causes and then extrapolating John’s potential states of mind upon returning to the flat.

 

            Not necessarily a bad thing, that. The git needs a bit of emotional intelligence, even if it’s only a quantitative understanding.

 

            He strikes out across Marylebone with a small crowd of other pedestrians. There’s a woman to his right with bleached, purple-tipped hair and tattered skinny jeans carrying a portfolio like the ones art students use to transport canvases; just ahead of her, two men in suits and coats laugh companionably about Manchester United’s rubbish performance as of late. On his left, a woman in a coat the colour of candied cherries talks loudly on a mobile phone as the man next to her keeps pace with a longsuffering, resigned expression. He tries to read further into the details—Purple Tips is in postgraduate school for art, the football fans are businessmen, Red Coat and Bored are married or siblings—but the generalities are all he can come up with, and he doubts he’s even come to the right general conclusions. Sherlock would mock him, were he present and aware of John's meagre efforts.

 

            Lacking anything better to do, John gives up being scientific about it as a bad job and makes up stories about people all the way to and through the Tesco. A shuffling, balding man with an ancient leather briefcase becomes a genius linguist who, upon seeing an ad in the Tube on his way home later today, will make the crucial connection that will let him translate the Voynich Manuscript. A quiet, somber-faced little girl walking beside her quiet, somber-faced mother is the scion of a long line of psychics, and her powers of precognition will soon eclipse even those of her grandmother. The old woman at the till in the shop with the faint remnant of a Russian accent has a long and storied history as an M16 double-agent planted deep in the Soviet engineering corps, where she diverted shipments of uranium and sabotaged centrifuges at several reactors before being recalled from Chernobyl mere days before the nuclear accident in 1986.

 

            Because he’s paying attention to the people around him, though, John notices the man in a worn jacket and tatty trousers who casually throws away his cigarette, detaches himself from a doorframe, and begins following him home.

 

            “Oh, come _on_ ,” John breathes as his mind and body automatically settle into the electrified calm of _enemy contact imminent._ He assesses his route, decides on points where attacks are most likely to come; flexing his hands, he recalls the contents of the grocery bags and their utility as impromptu weapons (wine bottle, _excellent_ ). He knows his mobile is back at the flat—he’d not bothered to take it with him—but he also knows that he’s well within view of the CCTV cameras along the route. Without tipping or turning his head, he glances up and makes eye contact with the nearest camera, willing Mycroft or one of the minions he undoubtedly has monitoring the feeds to see, _see, he’s being followed—_

The camera pivots on its mounting.

 

            John blinks—three short, three long, three short. He repeats it once, just to be clear, and then shifts his gaze to the windshields of parked cars, bus shelters, and the mirrored sunglasses of passers-by, trying to get a look at his follower and gauge the likelihood that he’ll close the distance between them.

 

            In the brief glimpses he manages to get, it seems the man is staying about three metres behind and watching him closely, even matching his pace when John pretends to slow down and examine a Pepsi ad at one of the bus shelters. John doesn’t relax, of course, but he does reexamine potential motivations for the man to be trailing him. Theft is right out—he’s got groceries and little else, and there are plenty of tourists wandering along with the commuters and breakfasters. After seeing the cameraman yesterday, John is inclined to think the two are related somehow, but he can’t be completely certain without better evidence of a connection. The guy could well be someone they’d angered in the course or aftermath of an investigation; there are more than enough of those sorts of people running around or sitting in prison.

 

            Relief wars with anxiety as the front door of the flat comes into sight. Even though it’s likely that the man already knows who he is and where he lives, he’s extremely unhappy about leading them back to the flat, to Sherlock, and the baby. At the same time, he wants to be back on home territory, where he can summon Sherlock with a shout if need be. Despite his better judgement, he speeds up a bit.

 

            His heart slams into his throat when the door opens and a chest-height swatch of purple fabric appears. “Sherlock!”

 

            The purple fabric moves out of the door along with the rest of Mrs Hudson and her new, large handbag. She spots John and waves cheerily. “Oh, John! Hello! Just look at you, up so early!”

 

            John gets up to the doorstep and glances back nervously, only to discover that his tail has disappeared from sight. Panting, he keeps scanning, hoping to spot the man _somewhere._

 

            “John? Is everything all right?”

 

            “Um.” He turns to Mrs Hudson, but he can’t help looking back over his shoulder every few seconds. Where did the bastard go so quickly? “I. Er. Groceries. I got them. The groceries, that is,” he replies, lifting one arm like the bags in his hand aren’t already obvious. He glances back again. “We didn’t have any, uh, food. You know.” His follower is still entirely gone from sight, but the sensation of being watched has redoubled. It’s making his skin crawl.

 

            Mrs Hudson pats his shoulder; he jumps. She doesn’t notice. “That’s lovely of you. Typical Sherlock, forgetting to feed himself.” She edges around John and down to the pavement. “I’ll be back in an hour or two. Morning coffee with the girls.”

 

            “Right. Er. Have fun,” says John.

 

            When one last sweep of the street fails to produce his tail, he backs inside, shuts the door, and locks it.


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place during roughly the same window of time as the previous one; instead of John's perspective, however, it's Sherlock's.
> 
> Hope that clarifies a little bit. Thank you so much for reading!

            Sherlock’s gaze leaves the window when the baby starts rooting at the crook of his neck. Her little hands clench and unclench over the fabric of his shirt as she drags her mouth over his skin. “You’ve already eaten,” he says absently, running fingers over the light hair on her head. It’s thicker than it had been two days ago; he goes to the kitchen and makes a note of it and her morning feed in the log. On a whim, he weighs and measures her—there’s a brief moment of concern (not panic) when he discovers that she’s lost just over forty grams in the past two days, but the internet soon assures him that this is normal and should be regained by day ten—and records those numbers in the log as well.

 

            The baby’s fallen asleep with the tip of his shirt collar in her mouth, so he puts her down in her basket and provides a pacifier to replace the cloth. A moment spent to check in on a few ongoing experiments finds things progressing well (the meconium cultures are particularly interesting), so Sherlock moves on to his laptop and blog.

 

            As ever, the commentary ranges from the inane (Mr Holmes my bf didnt come home last nite is he cheating??) to the insane (hope u burn in hell u bastd Richard Brook was 1000x the man u r!!!1!) to the downright imbecilic (unsolicited areolae are socially unacceptable, so far as he understands it, yet people insist on sending the images nonetheless). He adds a bit more to a draft monograph on the specific spectroscopic characteristics of different makes and brands of knife blades, solves a few of the least complicated, least annoying requests, and then navigates to John’s blog.

 

            The last post is from John and Mary’s most recent prenatal appointment; Mary, heavily pregnant, sits next to a beaming John in the photo. She’s smiling, but the curve of her mouth doesn’t quite make it to her eyes. She looks tired and faintly unhappy.

 

            Similarly unhappy are the commenters. Mary’s due date was four days ago, and the general consensus amongst the idiots commenting on the post appears to be that something is wrong but that John and Mary should not be pressed for details. He reads through Mike Stamford’s well-meaning yet ineffective efforts to discourage speculation, Harry Watson’s increasingly garbled, anxious demands for John to respond, and the awkward, generic platitudes of John’s little cadre of followers, steadily becoming more and more convinced that he may need to have one of Mycroft’s mimic-men pen a ‘blog post’ and possibly an obituary and death certificate (that is, if those aren’t already being produced).

 

            After around eight in the morning yesterday, however, the tone of the comments changes. There’s still anxiety, but there’s ‘congratulations’ and ‘good to see she’s healthy, how’s Mary doing’ and ‘oh how precious, knew he had it in him somewhere’ flying thick and fast, all after someone with the username ‘dhardin’ posted a Photobucket URL and a smiley face. Baffled and irritated—he’s the only one who gets to hijack blog posts—Sherlock clicks on the link.

 

            The Photobucket album, when it loads, strikes Sherlock dumb. There are five photographs, all shot through a persistent drizzle with a telephoto lens, of Sherlock standing with the baby in one of 221B’s parlour windows. The composition is frankly stunning—the photographer’s use of negative space follows Sherlock’s gaze in the pictures even as it draws the eye to the baby’s quiescent face by placing her at the heart of a perfect golden spiral of details. To any other observer, the photos must seem like beautiful, candid portraits of an unlikely gentle facet to his personality. To Sherlock, however, they speak of time.

 

            Too much time. Time to get in position. Time to set up the composition with delicate, unerring precision. Time to take five photographs over the course of nearly fifteen minutes—Sherlock remembers each gesture, remembers what he was saying at the time—and to remain unobserved the entire time.

 

            Sherlock copies the link and sends it to his brother’s priority email, waits thirty seconds, then picks up his mobile phone and dials Mycroft’s number.

 

            When he answers, Mycroft’s voice carries a barely-notable hint of concern. “This is problematic.”

 

            “How profoundly observant.” Sherlock looks the photographs over and then drops them over his memory of Baker Street as seen from street level. “I need the CCTV footage from yesterday at around six thirty in the morning.”

 

            It barely takes three minutes for the relevant files to appear in his inbox. “You’ve put a team on this, Mycroft?”

 

            Mycroft hums noncommittally. “It is likely that this may be of some import to national security. Efficiency is a happy side-effect.” He goes quiet as Sherlock begins scanning the footage. “Ah.”

 

            Sherlock pauses the film. The front windows of 221B are visible in the upper left corner of the image; on the street, three compact cars are parked along the near kerb and four cars and a van are parked along the far. The van is one of those blocky, large sorts favoured by plumbers and other contractors. Without Sherlock’s prompting, the cursor moves and magnifies the image, zooming in on the rightmost rear window of the van.

 

            Just visible through the tinting, a man with a camera is silhouetted against the light from the windscreen. “Our photographer,” says Mycroft. “Quentin, do you have a plate number or a name?”

 

            Someone speaks faintly in the background and the laptop display dances wildly as Mycroft’s man fast-forwards through the footage. The recognition algorithm he’s using is good—it identifies and depixilates the plate number and the text on the sides in seconds. “Hardin’s Hoovers, owned by one Robert Hardin.”

 

            Sherlock jumps at the name. “The user behind the photos was named ‘dhardin’,” he breathes. “Does Robert have a son?”

 

            “Daniel Hardin.” The same background voice, Mycroft’s ‘Quentin’, speaks up again. “The IP trace confirms that the post was made from a laptop in Hardin’s office.”

 

            “Tap it,” Sherlock snaps, scribbling down the names of the Hardins on a nearby notepad. “Phone taps, email interception, keyloggers, everything.”

 

            Mycroft sighs. “We are already a step ahead of y—” He pauses when Quentin cuts him off. “He what?”

 

            The laptop screen flickers again, switching to what appears to be a live feed. Sherlock recognises Baker Street and then John, right in the middle of the frame as he strides along with several bags of groceries in hand. He has his face angled normally, as if looking ahead as he walks, but his eyes are locked on the camera—he’s blinking, thrice quickly, thrice slowly—

 

            — _“What... would you like me... to make him say... next?” John parrots stiffly, blinking strangely. Shocked by the lights and wires and Semtex and the blood-red glare of a laser sight, he misses it the first time, but when John does it again, he sees the pattern._

_Three quick blinks, three longer blinks, and then three more quick blinks._

_SOS. Help.—_

—and thrice quickly again. “He’s being followed. Behind him, three metres.”

 

            Sherlock can hear frantic keystrokes over the phone connection as the camera pivots. He watches as John tests his tail by slowing and pausing occasionally, providing openings for a pickpocketing or mugging. The man following him, an unremarkable, early-thirties blond in tatty clothing, simply keeps his distance until John’s pace picks up as he nears Baker Street. Then, instead of closing, the man veers off and slides into the back seat of a car that pulls up to the kerb. Pickup completed, the car merges into the flow of traffic and is gone before John looks back from the safety of the doorstep and Mrs Hudson’s presence.

 

            Ringing off, Sherlock tosses his mobile aside and leaps to his feet, meeting John at the top of the stairs. “You were followed.”

 

            John hands him half of the groceries and goes straight to the kitchen, where he briskly unpacks his half of the shopping. “I was.” He stows away the other half of it once Sherlock has placed the bags on the kitchen table. “Is the baby all right?”

 

            Sherlock nods, indicating the basket currently taking up his armchair. The baby is fast asleep, despite Sherlock’s urgency on the phone. He goes to fetch his laptop—the CCTV feed is gone—and returns to the kitchen with it, setting it on the table and opening the window with John’s blog and the link to the photographs. “They made a mistake, John. I’d imagine this name isn’t very familiar to you?”

 

            Leaning in to look, John shakes his head ‘no’. He clicks the link; as soon as the pictures load, his jaw tightens and his eyes flash dangerously. “Sherlock. How long have you known about this?”

 

            “Half an hour ago,” Sherlock replies. “They were posted yesterday morning, while we were at the morgue.”

 

            John is still staring at the picture on the screen. “Explain the mistake.”

 

            A shiver runs down Sherlock’s spine. He’s not heard _that_ tone before. The closest he can remember was back in the planetarium as John very calmly, very frankly threatened death to a man nearly twice his size. He hurries to pull up the window with the CCTV still of the ‘Hardin's Hoovers’ van. “The username—dhardin is Daniel Hardin, son of Robert Hardin, owner of this business. That is from yesterday, around the time when the photos were taken.”

 

            John’s posture is rigid when he straightens from the laptop. “I want my gun. Go get it from whatever hidey-hole you’ve squirreled it away in, bring it to me, and find the address for that business.” Standing like he is and speaking with that tone, he seems six inches taller than usual. Sherlock has to fight to disobey the order.

 

            “Mycroft has a team on—”

 

            John steps in and glares up at Sherlock from a few scant centimetres away. “That is _my daughter_ in that photograph. Sherlock Holmes, _get me my gun._ ”

 

            Sherlock grits his teeth. “I can’t.” He raises a hand when John begins to respond angrily. “John. John, I understand, I do, but _that is your daughter_ in the other room, and I know what happens to people who go into enemy territory unprepared. I _know_ and I cannot let you do that. I cannot, and I will not.” Holding John’s gaze, he slowly rests his hand on John’s chest, just over his heart. He can feel it beating beneath the skin of his palm, even through the wool of John’s jumper.

 

            John’s eyes shut. He sucks in a deep, harsh breath, holds it, and lets it go, leaning into Sherlock’s palm and bowing his head until it touches Sherlock’s chest. He stands there and repeats the breathing exercise. “Fuck,” he curses as he exhales shakily. “Fuck, Sherlock, what do we do?”

 

            The impulse is far too strong to resist; what’s more, it feels like the right thing to do, ridiculous and sentimental though it may be. Sherlock moves his hand so he can put both arms around John and pull him in close.

 

            It’s like someone has cut John’s strings. He sags into Sherlock, wrapping his arms around him tightly and gripping the fabric of his shirt. “Oh fuck, Sherlock. Oh God, why is this happening?” He sucks in a shuddering breath; Sherlock is horrified when he realises that John is _crying_ into his arms. “I didn’t choose this. I didn’t. I didn’t want this, Sherlock, why is it happening?”

 

            Regret. Sherlock knows that emotion better than most might expect, though he rarely allows himself to do more than acknowledge its presence. Now, however, he feels it keenly. As soon as Mary had stepped into John’s path, the die had been cast—John’s craving for danger and excitement only ensured Mary’s sway over him. John did not and would not choose this for himself, and Sherlock should never have implied as much that night. “This wasn’t your choice,” he says into John’s hair, stepping back until he can lean on the counter for support.

 

            How is he supposed to explain to John that, if anything, it is Sherlock’s fault that this has happened to him? He loathes being the one to blame, but the chain of cause-and-effect is very plain to see—if Sherlock had not involved himself in Moriarty’s cases, if he had not purposely played John’s appetite for danger against him on that very first case, none of this would be happening. He lifts a hand and cards his fingers through John’s hair. When one is at fault for something, one is supposed to confess and then apologise, but... Sherlock does not want to tell John. John will leave if he realises just how much of this is Sherlock’s doing, even if it’s indirect, and Sherlock doesn’t want to risk that, no matter how much he probably should.

 

            John tightens his grip on Sherlock’s shirt, clears his throat, and turns his head so his cheek is resting over Sherlock’s heart. “You’re right.” Not too much later, he steps back (though not very far, Sherlock notices) and shakes his head once, slowly. “No, you’re absolutely right. I wasn’t given much of a choice, was I?” He looks up at Sherlock, eyes reddened and cheeks wet; Sherlock holds his breath. “Neither of us was, really. Moriarty played you like a fiddle, and Mary had me down to a science.”

 

            Sherlock refrains from replying, averting his gaze. He knows that, if he speaks, he’ll incriminate himself somehow.

 

            Fingertips alight on the far side of Sherlock’s chin and turn his face back to John’s. “Stop that,” John rasps. “It’s not your fucking fault, do you understand that? I don’t care what that big brain of yours thinks— _neither of us asked for this._ ” His earlier uncertainty has metamorphosed—now there’s anger alight in his eyes, cold and relentless. He turns and points at the laptop screen, meeting Sherlock’s gaze firmly. “I will not be having that. _We_ will not be having that. It. Is. Not. On. Now, you’re going to _sit down_ and tell me what I need to do, Sherlock Holmes, because I am _done_ with being a fucking pawn in a dead psychopath’s bloody stupid games.”

 

            By the time coherent thought comes back to him, Sherlock is already seated in front of the laptop, heart pounding, cheeks blazing, and John warm and present at his back as he watches him work.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a bit late. I really hope the quality's all right; between teaching maths, preparing a social studies unit, planning a writing workshop, and this ridiculously virulent coronavirus that's sent half the school (no, seriously, _half the school_ , we've maybe ninety kids and forty-one of them were home ill today) and my supervising teacher home sick, I've been a very, very busy bee indeed. 
> 
> Many, many thanks for all of your support and feedback for this little palaver-- I have as much fun reading your commentary as I do writing the chapters!

            Sherlock’s mobile rings shortly after he and John confirm that the Hardins are not on the list of names that Mary had given them. He notices John’s tension at the sight of the blank caller ID screen, but Sherlock feels only relief as he picks up the phone and puts the call on speaker. The sooner they get more information, the better. “Sherlock Holmes.”

 

            “Mr Holmes, hello.” Immediately upon hearing him, Sherlock is fairly certain that the caller on the other end of the line, though speaking in a slightly pitchy, Liverpudlian accent, is the same voice he’d heard in the background of his call with Mycroft earlier. “I’m Vincent Quentin, with Sixth Sense Communications. I wanted to talk to you about the service appointment you’d requested,” he says, all fake earnestness and cheer.

 

            Sherlock glances over at John. _Unfriendly electronic surveillance possible,_ he writes on a piece of scrap paper between them. John won’t like it, but John likes being left in the dark even less. “Excellent, just who I wanted to hear from. I’ve been in contact with a client and I need the repairs done immediately—this is not a case that can wait. How long will I need to rely on my mobile?” He nods and holds up a quelling hand when the doctor noisily scribbles out a written demand to know if the call with Mycroft had been compromised.

 

            “Well, Mr Holmes, that certainly sounds important! We’ve looked over the information you sent us earlier and we suspect it’s a problem with your wireless router, since your phone lines seem to be in working condition. I’m so sorry that you’ve been having problems! I don’t know what I’d do without Google or Facebook. Do you want to keep your appointment? Someone can be sent over today to walk you through troubleshooting.”

 

            _They’re monitoring surface Internet activity from this IP; phone taps unlikely but code is safer,_ Sherlock writes beneath John’s messy scrawl. _They want to send someone over._ When John nods, he gives a dismissive sniff into the phone. “I don’t have time to fiddle with electronics. Send your best, immediately.”

 

            “My pleasure, Mr Holmes. In the meantime, be alert for dead connections and check the fuse box. The metals in older fuse terminals are hot commodities with metal prices as high as they are.”

 

            Sherlock’s mouth opens in an ‘o’ of its own accord. John raises his eyebrows expectantly, and Sherlock snaps it shut. “If I must. I expect your man here before noon.”

 

            “We’ll do our best, Mr Holmes. Take care.” Quinn hangs up.

 

            The smile on John’s face is less an expression of joy and more of an anticipatory baring of teeth. “You’ve found something,” he says lowly, pleasedly.

 

            Sherlock grins, too, and steadfastly ignores the way his heart pounds in response to that tone of voice. “ _Dead_ connections, John.”

 

            As ever, John is much more clever than he gives himself credit for—he cottons on within a few seconds. “Connections to the dead. This is related to Mar... to the three murdered men.”

 

            Sherlock goes back to his laptop and opens a Terminal window, fingers flying as he keys in the commands to access Mycroft’s network of proxies and mirrors. “More specifically, to one of them—the commodities trader.”

 

            John’s face lights up. “Hot commodity,” he laughs, shaking his head in disbelief. “This is like a fucking Cold War spy novel, Sherlock. _What_ —I mean, _what_ mad world do we live in?”

 

            “You prefer it this way and you know it,” Sherlock ripostes as he tosses a wink at John. Once he has confirmation that his IP address is sufficiently obscured, he finds McConn’s email in the information on Mary’s flash drive. He enters the email into the website’s login page, clicks in the password field, and then initiates a brute-force program. Sitting back, he favours John with a smile. “It’s likely that this will take time... How do you feel about an interview?”

 

            ***

 

            Melanie Hoard—commodities trader at the same company as McConn, happily single, bird owner, independently wealthy—perches in a strange, angular wood-and-aluminium chair and watches John try to make sense of the wire-frame couch that dominates the sitting room of her Chelsea flat. “You mean McConn.”

 

            Sherlock nods. “Yes.” He glances around the Spartan, wood-floored room one last time before returning his attention to Melanie. “Does he have enemies?”

 

            Distracted from the baby, Melanie snorts and rolls her eyes. “McConn has a few more than most.” She crosses her arms, but her hands are cupping her elbows instead of folding into them. “He’s a _bastard,_ always strutting around the place and playing mind games with people. We’ve lost productivity because we’re constantly looking over our shoulders for him.”

 

            Interesting. “Mind games?” Sherlock asks. Judging by her tone, McConn’s ‘games’ were not the typical sort of office mischief. “What sort of mind games?”

 

            Melanie shudders. “Creepy ones. Few years ago, he printed out and sliced up photos of Dave’s wife and kids for nearly three weeks before we caught him at it. He’d signed them ‘your biggest fan, xxxx’. Said it was all a prank, like on the telly, but no one believed it—Dave made the better trades the month before, and McConn hated him for it. Dave was a fucking wreck by the end of it. The bosses wouldn’t do anything, though, because McConn’s got a sixth sense for when the market’s about to turn.” She purses her lips worriedly and tightens her grip on her elbows. “Early on, before the Dave incident, he’d asked me out to dinner. He showed up dressed in Westwood and took me to the Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, where he had reservations for that table that you can see out of but no one else can see in.” She shivers. “There were two other men at the table—powerful men.”

 

            Sherlock pauses her there. “Powerful. Why do you say that? Did they mention their jobs?”

 

            “No,” Melanie replies, “but they... had that _attitude_ , you know? Like sharks, or a tiger—they just... watched, waited. I don’t think they even liked McConn. He was just entertainment to them, like a monkey doing tricks.”

 

            “Can you describe them?” asks John.

 

            Melanie lifts a loose fist to her lips and bites at her knuckle, brow furrowed. “One was quiet. Quieter than the other, anyway. McConn called him Mr Waters. He had bleached hair and an expensive suit... actually, I think it was Westwood, too. Charcoal pinstripes with this blood red tie and a skull pin. He just sat there, drank his wine, and watched everything. He had... sleepy blue eyes, almost doelike, turned down at the cor—I’m sorry, is this too much detail?” She looks up at them sheepishly, anxiously. “It’s only that I’m a writer on the side, and these people were like they’d stepped out of a film. I wrote it all down afterward.”

 

            Sherlock gives her an encouraging gesture, so she continues. “Right. So. Er, the quiet man, Mr Waters—he was small, but he was the one in charge. It was almost as if McConn was taking _him_ on the date. Couldn’t scramble fast enough to wait on him hand and foot.

 

            “The other one, Mr Shawland, was an older man, craggy, all perfectly-combed salt and pepper hair and this absolutely magnificent beard. He told a few stories about deep-water fishing and yacht racing, and it wasn’t hard at all to picture the man out on some million-quid boat with a half-dozen Brazilian bombshells on his arm. McConn didn’t seem to like him quite so much.

 

            “Anyway, I was sitting there, totally weirded out, trying to come up with some way to get away from the table early, when McConn took my glass and sipped out of it before dropping something into it as he put it back. I mean, I was _right there_ as he did it; I don’t know how he thought I wouldn’t see it. He got up to go to the loo and I just looked up at Mr Waters and Mr Shawland like, ‘did you _see_ that?’

 

            “That’s when Mr Waters got up and switched my glass with McConn’s. ‘Dreadful execution, just dreadful,’ he said, and sat back in his chair, cool as you please.” Melanie shivers and bows her head. “I’ve never been so frightened in my life. I’m certain that, had McConn been cleverer about it, Mr Waters would have let it happen. He only switched it because I’d spotted it and he thought it was funny—giggled and clapped like a little girl when McConn passed out in the middle of his lobster. He had Mr Shawland take me out to a cab, and McConn never bothered me after that.”

 

            John takes in a long breath and closes his eyes, his expression a potent mixture of horror and relief. “That was Moriarty.” Opening his eyes, he looks to Sherlock. “That was him, wasn’t it?”

 

            Sherlock nods. “It was.” He turns to Melanie and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and folding his fingers together. “From what I gather, though Marcus McConn avoided you after that night, you were proximate enough to one another at work that you would have noticed any major change in his behaviour. Was he unusually agitated at any point?”

 

            Her expression (eyebrows arched high, eyes shut briefly, gaze rolling to the left and slightly down, head tipping slightly back) answers the question before she can—there must have been a very notable incident indeed. “Two years ago, he was suspended for a week after he attacked Rick in the lounge. He was screaming about how ‘it was her, it was her, you know she did it, I knew it’. I don’t know who ‘she’ was, he never said a name, but he was _raging_ about it.”

 

            John’s hands slide up the baby’s back as he bows his head and presses his lips to her hair. Sherlock observes him quietly for a moment. “Did his behaviour change recently?”

 

            Melanie shrugs. “Not that I’ve noticed—if he’s not angry, he’s a smarmy, cocky git.” She eyes Sherlock and John for a moment and crosses her legs. “Now... you’re Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, aren't you? You’d not be here unless something had happened, so what is it? Did he kill someone, or is he dead?”

 

            “Dead,” Sherlock replies simply as he buttons his coat. He gives Melanie a brief smile as social niceties dictate and turns to John, who is already standing at attention at his side. “Shall we?”

 

            John gives Sherlock a patiently expectant look.

 

            Sherlock faces Melanie and smiles again. “Marcus McConn was murdered yesterday by someone we believe worked for ‘Mr Waters’, who, by the way, shot himself in the head two years ago. Thank you for your insight, Miss Hoard, have a nice day!”

 

            He doesn’t sweep John along quite as quickly as typical—he does have the baby to think of, after all, and she, like most infants, does not take well to being jostled unnecessarily—but the exit is nonetheless made at an acceptable clip. John giggles the whole way out. “Hello, your coworker was just murdered by the creepy bloke from that shit date three years ago, and did I mention that said bloke blew his brains out? Yes, well, that’s all, really, have a nice day,” he quips. He shakes his head slowly. “Working with you is like taking a crash course in how to frighten the peasants.”

 

            “I’ll be sure to remind you that you’ve referred to them as such,” Sherlock responds easily, letting his and John’s shoulders bump. He’s surprised (not unpleasantly, however, which is curious) when John maintains the contact, staying close as they stroll down the pavement together.

 

            John shoves his hands in his pockets and purses his lips in that very John sort of way. “So McConn had some sort of... I don’t know, hero-worship thing for Moriarty.” He glances up at Sherlock for confirmation. “You think it was Mary he was ranting about when he went off the rails on the bloke at the office?”

 

            “Certain of it.”

 

            “So he hired those goons to... what, get to her?”

 

            Sherlock shrugs. “Most likely. They’re probably attempting to draw her out by threatening you and the baby.”

 

            There’s a flicker of motion to their left as they pass an alley. John’s stride changes almost instantly as his hands leave his pockets and his posture goes simultaneously tense and flexible. “Talk of the... Sherlock? Do you think the help we ordered back at the flat has arrived? They should be there by now.” John’s tone is admirably conversational, but what he’s really asking is: _do we have backup?_

 

            “They’re very thorough. I wouldn’t worry.”

 

            John doesn’t seem assuaged.

 

            He’s correct to feel that way. The man who’s fallen into step behind them moves up and pushes between John and Sherlock. “Best keep yer noses outta business that ain’t yers,” he says.

 

            “Or what?” John asks, dangerously quiet.

 

            “D’you enjoy bein’ a daddy, Doctor Watson?”

 

            Quite suddenly, the man and John are no longer there. Sherlock stops and looks back—John has grabbed the man and thrown him against the brick wall of the alley they’d been walking past. John has one of the man’s wrists pinned between his shoulder blades; there’s blood smeared on the brickwork and _dear god another gun_ jammed into the occipital region of the interloper’s skull. As awkward as the pin is because of the baby at John’s chest, the gun is more than making up for the lack of leverage. “Do you enjoy _living_?” John hisses, giving the gun a rough shove when the man struggles. “Oh, by all means, give me the excuse. I will _relish_ painting this wall with the contents of your skull, you _pathetic waste of oxygen._ Are you going to give me the excuse?”

 

            Sherlock thinks about stopping him, but hesitates. He has no idea how John will respond to interference, and he does _not_ want to risk triggering an escalation of the situation. He looks back and flashes a palm at the black car that’s pulled up to the kerb.

 

            The man is sagging in John’s grip now, whimpering and panting in terror. “No sir! No sir! Please don’t shoot me! Oh God, it were just a bluff, jus’ an empty threat, I swear on it, sir, please!”

 

            John casually knocks the man out. The baby grunts as he readjusts her in the wrap and it’s almost as if a switch has been flipped—John is all gentle, loving concern, gently stroking her hair and murmuring reassuring nothings into the kisses he presses to her head.

 

            Sherlock reaches in and takes the gun from John. Despite its heft, its awkward, front-heavy balance immediately makes it apparent that the 'gun' isn't a firearm at all. “A lighter.” He looks up at John, who watches him handle the novelty lighter with resignation and amusement. “You... held him up with a _lighter._ ” He’s suddenly lightheaded with relief, or maybe shock, and has to lean into the alley wall a bit as his knees threaten to give out.

 

            “Worked for the cabbie, didn’t it?” John asks.

 

            The giggles that suddenly bubble up and out of Sherlock sound a bit hysterical even to his ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, if anyone has any pointers about computer surveillance, proxies, or any of that (read: if I got anything flagrantly wrong in this chapter), please feel free to educate me. My understanding of that sort of thing is average at best.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot apologise enough for my lateness with this regrettably short update. I'm officially graduated from university with a major in primary education and a minor in astrophysics, however, so I suppose something decent has come of doing nothing but teach, write lessons and analyses, eat, and sleep for the past month. Again, my deepest apologies-- hopefully my overabundance of free time will allow me to update on my old schedule once more.
> 
> Brief warnings for my own computer-fancy-technology incompetence and for misogyny and really, really dreadful grammar from a dead antagonist.

            Mycroft’s men give them a ride home. It’s a bit cramped with Sherlock, John, the baby, and their lighter-whipped friend all crammed into the back of the saloon, but John seems perfectly satisfied. He simply takes the lighter, hands Sherlock the baby, and plants himself between the thug and Sherlock, radiating smug self-satisfaction the whole way back to Baker Street. Sherlock just holds the baby close and hopes the thug stays quiet if he comes to. He does not want to know what a crying baby and a crying criminal sound like in a small, confined space.

 

            After extracting a promise from Mycroft's men to pass along any information they wring out of the thug, John hops out of the cab with a spring in his step and offers a hand to Sherlock as he exits. “Wonder if that computer thing’s worked?” John asks aloud as they climb the steps to 221B. He pauses in front of the door, one eyebrow raised at the sight of a small piece of clear plastic pinned under the knocker. “What’s thi... no, _really?_ ”

 

            Sherlock meets his incredulous-amused look with a wry smile of his own. “All clear.”

 

            Shaking his head, John sighs and opens the door to 221, ignoring the plastic as it flutters to the floor. “’S like something out of an old Bond film,” he laughs. “Surely they’ve moved past the Cold War? Should I be watching out for rocket pens? Shoe phones? Rolex watches with tiny cameras?” Despite his light tone, his posture is sharply wary whilst he pauses to scan the sitting room. Satisfied, he steps aside and allows Sherlock entry.

 

            Sherlock shrugs as he tucks the baby into her basket, bending to press his lips to her forehead briefly. She’ll need to be fed in an hour, but that’s more than enough time to give McConn’s email account a cursory examination. “It’s unexpected. The enemy will find themselves stymied indeed if they find tumblers when they’ve come prepared for hexadecimal keys.” He pauses to watch as the doctor prowls through the flat, peering into rooms and checking in every cabinet. Survey complete, John stations himself at the window. His posture is ramrod straight and his knuckles are white, but his expression is almost placid, even pleasant.

 

            He may as well be wearing one of the land mine warning signs from Baskerville—best not to test his control by noting the slim possibility that McConn’s email could be a dead end. Sherlock gets to his feet without further comment and makes his way to the kitchen, plunking down in front of the laptop.

 

            Pleasingly, the brute-force program has worked. “I’m in,” Sherlock remarks, which draws John over. The doctor’s fingertips brush Sherlock’s back as he takes his place behind the chair. “It looks like McConn was not as discreet about his communications as he should have been.” In subject line after subject line, McConn’s emails are almost embarrassingly transparent. ‘Looking for adderall’, reads one. Another one, ‘re: you know you want it’, is just under ‘birds who think theyre too good to fuck’. Several subject lines seem to concern the sale of several tonnes of scrap copper, one of which strongly implies that the metal was procured less than legally.

 

            “Stop,” John says, leaning over Sherlock’s shoulder and tapping the screen. “This one. ‘The bitch’. Not sure who else that could be but Mary, going by what Miss Hoard told us.”

 

            Sherlock opens the conversation.

 

            _From: bigmark@hotmail.com_

_To: rhenders@gmail.com_

            _Subject: The bitch_

 

            _Henderson, your a reasonable bloke. Shawlands off his nut if he thinks Morstan is good for any of this. Bad enough its a bitch in charge, but that ones trouble. How do we know she wasnt the one with the gun when Boss was up on the roof with that fuckin detective? I dont like it. Women cant run businesses like this to begin with but this bitch is gonna ruin everything. She had it out for Boss and shes got it out for us, you know it._

 

 

 

            _From: rhenders@gmail.com_

_To: bigmark@hotmail.com_

            _Subject: Re: The bitch_

_Mark,_

_For the last time, Mr Moriarty killed himself on the hospital roof. He wasn’t all there in the end, Mark—you weren’t around to see it, so you couldn’t have known, but he was haemorrhaging money left and right on his little games with Holmes. Profits dropped nearly sixty percent because of him alone; Morstan’s ventures consistently brought in money. She’s cautious, she’s thorough, and she had nearly five years with Mr Moriarty before he went off the deep end. No one knows the system better. Drop it._

_From: bigmark@hotmail.com_

_To: samorson@gmail.com, Ixion_

            _Subject: CC: Re: The bitch_

_Can you believe this punter, just rolling over and taking it?_

_Im not gonna stand for it. Its not right, that woman in charge. You know she killed the Boss and now shes gonna kill the business and destroy everything he built. Ive contacted a couple of blokes I know who take care of this sort of thing. You need to get in touch with your man up top and start some kind of investigation, shes nothing but trouble. I called it way back before the Boss died and Im calling it again. If we dont get her out, everythings ruined._

_From: Ixion_

_To: bigmark@hotmail.com_

            _Subject: CC: Re: The bitch_

_I expect you to manage the situation appropriately. Resources have been allocated for your use, but remember that discretion is the better part of valour—if you aren’t thorough, this is going to come back to haunt you._

_-I_

_From: samorson@gmail.com_

_To: bigmark@hotmail.com_

            _Subject: CC: Re: The bitch_

_Mark,_

_I don’t know that she was behind Mr Moriarty’s death, but she’s no genius, not like him, and I don’t trust her. She’s in a position now where she could go back to her handlers and keep her head, what with all the information she has. She’s a liability and she has to go. I’m looking into potential solutions as well, but we need to be careful._

_Mr Moriarty had Morstan planted with Holmes’ doctor. They’re married and have a baby on the way. She’s probably gone soft, so if you put pressure on the doctor or the baby, she should cave and back off, since she won’t want to leave the baby or her pet doctor. Holmes has enough money to send them somewhere overseas and then she’ll be out of our hair._

_Whatever you do, McConn, keep your mouth shut._

            John, still hovering over Sherlock’s left shoulder, snorts. “God, did they underestimate her,” he sighs, shaking his head. “Suppose we all did, really.” He bows his head for a moment, clenching and unclenching his fists near Sherlock’s back. The bitterness in his tone is evident.

 

            At this point, Mary’s guile is irrelevant, but Sherlock does not voice that thought. They need to focus on identifying current threats, not past deceptions, and starting a fight over it with John is anything but productive. “They’ve certainly suffered for their assumptions. Who is Ixion, I wonder?” Sherlock muses aloud, frowning when hovering the pointer over the contact name doesn’t reveal Ixion’s email address.

 

            John reaches over Sherlock’s shoulder and navigates back to McConn’s inbox. “Well, it isn’t the third man, Ballinger. His email’s right here.” He taps over a ‘gballinger@yahoo.co.uk’ in an email further down the list. “Ixion... almost sounds like a character from one of Chris Melas’ comics.”

 

            “Graphic novels, John, do keep up.” Sherlock opens a new tab and types ‘Ixion’ into the search bar. “There are two possibilities,” he says as he scrolls through the search results. Some sort of bizarrely mutated horse creature dominates the images returned, but the links returned refer primarily to a figure from Greek stories. “He is either a video game enthusiast—this... horse thing is evidently a recurring character in a series of games—or someone with a fondness for Greek mythology.”

 

            “How do we know which it is?”

 

            Sherlock frowns at the screen. The Ixion of Greek mythos (according to the Internet) killed his own father-in-law after a dispute over an unpaid dowry, was exiled for his crime, and, when Zeus took pity and invited him to his table, Ixion openly violated Greek guest-host protocol by lusting after Zeus’ wife, Hera. Why someone would want to be associated with a man condemned to an eternity strapped to a burning wheel is a bit beyond Sherlock, but people routinely do things that defy logic, and Ixion’s story at least ascribes something of a motive to whoever Ixion is if one looked at Moriarty as Zeus and Mary as Hera.

 

            Of course, it’s entirely possible that, given the electronic gaming proclivities of many people his age and younger, this ‘Ixion’ may simply be a gamer—Moriarty’s network includes plenty of young people, and criminality hardly precludes hobbies.

 

            Worse still, the user could simply have liked the look of the name and chosen it without regard for its origin. 

 

            Sighing, Sherlock gets out his mobile phone and dials his brother.

 

            “Sherlock. Hit a wall, have we?”

 

            Sherlock grits his teeth and snarls into the phone. “ _Now is not the time_.” He jabs the necessary keys to copy and then forward his brother the chain of emails from his own email address. “I need to know more about Ixion.”

 

            The soft taps of keystrokes are audible over the phone connection. “Interesting choice of name. Ixion, killer of his own father-in-law and unsuccessful defiler of Zeus’ wife—what a lovely exposure of motivation that would be.”

 

            “Too convenient,” Sherlock retorts.

 

            Much as he extols the science of deductive reasoning, Sherlock is no fool, and he is more than capable of admitting it when his favoured instrument has failed to perform adequately—two years of his best work alongside his brother’s genius should have been enough to gut Jim Moriarty’s empire, but some of the names on the flash drive Mary had given him have been more than enough proof that the roots go far, far deeper and spread much, much wider than he had ever imagined. He’ll never admit it, but Mary’s information has left him humbled.

 

            The sound on the other end of the line goes muffled for a moment; Sherlock can faintly hear Mycroft and someone else speaking. “Mycroft?”

 

            “A moment, Sherlock,” Mycroft replies before muffling the receiver again.

 

            Sherlock waits impatiently, drumming his fingers on the tabletop and rolling his eyes at John, who returns it with a sardonic twist of his lips.

 

            Eventually, Mycroft finishes his little clandestine chat. “You have an appointment to meet with one of our specialists at noon sharp at 32 Joiner Street. His assistant will meet you on the ground floor and show you to his office.”

 

            A glance at the clock shows a time of 11:30; if they leave now and catch a taxi, they can make the appointment on time. He stands from the table. “This had better be helpful, Mycroft.”

 

            Mycroft hums. “Oh, I suspect it will be. Good luck, baby brother.”


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Late again. I'm not very good at this, am I?

            John’s jaw drops when the cab pulls up to the address. “Sherlock.”

 

            Sherlock opens his wallet and hands the cabbie enough bills to appease his temper. The baby has been fussing into Sherlock’s chest the entire time; she’s not hungry, but she’s apparently done with being moved around when she would rather be sleeping. “Yes, John?” He adjusts her against his chest so she can hide her face in his collar and grab the lapels. It seems to soothe her for the time being.

 

            “Sherlock, this is the Shard.”

 

            John is looking at him as if the location is somehow his fault. Sherlock rolls his eyes. “It is.”

 

            Tourists mill about under five-quid umbrellas and cheap macs as their various tour guides attempt to rally their groups; the few Londoners, mostly employees of the building or the companies inside, simply ignore the light sprinkling of rain and go about their business. “Sherlock, who the hell are we meeting here?” John demands, fending off an over-attentive American woman from getting too close to Sherlock and the baby with a glare. “Did Mycroft say?”

 

            It wouldn’t be a great surprise if the contact turns out to be one of Mycroft’s underlings in MI5 or MI6. Any intelligence agency worth its salt maintains a number of proxy businesses—usually in logistics, communications, or law—and jockeys for advertising space and real estate with everyone else. Money and power are the great motivators in the modern world, and what better way to manipulate criminals or hostiles into a mistake than by playing them with rivalries and business competition? No, it really wouldn’t be a shock to find MI5 literally watching over London from the glass walls of the Shard.

 

            All the same, it could very well be an independent contact, in which case Sherlock is inclined to be rather suspicious indeed. Though many British and UK-based businesses have recovered since the 2008 recession, very few are back to the point where leasing prestigious real estate (never mind prestigious real estate as expensive as that of the Shard) is anywhere on their agenda. If the contact does prove to be an independent player, he’s going to be very, very powerful and may very well refuse to help if it doesn’t benefit him or his agenda. Furthermore, Mycroft has recommended them to this contact in order to deal with people known to be associated with a major crime syndicate—though he himself may not participate in criminal activity, it’s very unlikely that the man isn’t somehow tied to the syndicate as well.

 

            “Sherlock?”

 

            Pulled from his thoughts, Sherlock shakes his head. “I know as much as you do, John.” He strides through the lobby doors, head held high, and searches for anyone who looks more like a personal assistant than a tour guide or concierge.

 

            He doesn’t have to search long. “Mr Holmes, Doctor Watson, sirs,” a silver-haired woman in a tailored tweed suit says as she appears at Sherlock’s elbow, opposite John. “This way, please. Alistair is expecting you.” The platinum wedding band on her hand glints in the sunlight as she gestures for him to follow her.

 

            Bypassing the queue of tourists waiting to be taken to the observation deck is possibly one of the most satisfying things Sherlock has ever experienced. Even John looks smug; he meets Sherlock’s brief gaze and bites back a smile. “If I ever get it in my head that it might be fun to pay thirty quid and queue up for a ride to the top of a chunk of glass and steel, Sherlock...”

 

            “Oh, you can be quite certain that I’ll disabuse you of the notion,” Sherlock promises gamely. “That is, if the tourists don’t do it for me first.” This draws a snort from John and a demure little chuckle from the woman in tweed.

 

            The lift stops on the twentieth floor. Smiling, the woman holds out an arm as they emerge from the lift lobby into an open-plan office space full of desks, computers, and clustered screens. “Just this way, gentlemen. Welcome to Landeshaw Communications, by the way—ah, Maryam. Thank you, dear.” She accepts a tablet computer and a portfolio of printouts from a young woman in a sleek pantsuit and a turquoise hijab. “One of our most promising network engineers. You wouldn’t believe the magic she works.”

 

            Sherlock nods and makes the sort of affirmative noise one makes when one is distracted on the phone; John stares around at the computers in amazement. “Are those touchscreens?” he asks, pointing at one of the clusters.

 

            “They are, Doctor Watson, well-spotted. Our network administrators and analysts do most of their work individually, but we find it helps if the administrators, analysts, and engineers are able to meet and collaborate on new projects and proposed changes.” Despite his apparent interest, the woman keeps them moving toward an office walled with frosted glass. “Here at Landeshaw, we’re very much of the opinion that the job a person was hired for should not prevent them from contributing to other areas in the company. It’s rather a waste of talent to do otherwise, don’t you think?”

 

            Sherlock makes his noncommittal noise again—they’re here to meet one of Mycroft’s contacts, not consider an investment—and John just nods, clearly out of his depth.

 

            The door to the glass office opens. “Agatha, you found our guests. Excellent.”

 

            “Good god,” says John, and Sherlock has to agree. It’s like the man has just stepped out of the pages of the latest Paul Stuart catalogue: tan, tall, and powerful, it’s like a silver-maned lion has neatly folded itself into the shape of a human man, right down to his immaculate beard and piercing, golden hazel eyes. His deep, rich cobalt blazer drapes perfectly over broad shoulders, a powder-blue button-down collar, and a creamy silver double-breasted waistcoat, and his charcoal trousers are so precisely pressed and creased that Sherlock suspects he could use the fold as a straightedge for drafting. Even his shoes and socks are polished and matched perfectly to the outfit.

 

            “Alistair Landeshaw,” the man rumbles, flashing perfectly straight, white teeth in a smile, “and you’ve met my magnificent Agatha. You must be Mr Holmes and Captain Watson. I was in the Armed Forces myself, you know. 30 Commando, back when we were still mucking about in Russia. Ruddy wonder we’re still tangled up in all that mess, wouldn't you say?”

 

            John nods, a bit dazed, and clasps the offered hand (Sherlock notes that he is wearing a well-polished platinum band to match the one on Agatha’s hand); from the way his lips quirk up and his jaw tightens briefly, Landeshaw’s grip is quite firm. “It’s the Great Game on a bigger board, Mr Landeshaw; when aren’t we tangled up in it?”

 

            The baby startles as Landeshaw tosses his head back and gives a great laugh. “So it is, so it is!” he guffaws as he gives a somewhat alarmed John a sound thump on the back. “Well met, Captain, Mr Holmes. Do have a seat, the kettle’s just boiled and I have this _glorious_ orange spice I brought back from Babol, and—ah! Who is this?” He stands again as soon as John is seated and leans in to inspect the baby. The baby looks at him for a moment, then turns her head to fist little hands in Sherlock’s shirt and complain into his neck.

 

            “My daughter,” John replies quickly, saving Sherlock the trouble. “Her mum’s, er, not well, and...”

 

            Landeshaw waggles a finger at the baby and chuckles. “If by ‘not well’ you mean ‘cleaning up after a lot of bloody imbeciles’, then she certainly is.” He pats the baby’s hand twice and straightens up, completely ignoring John’s clenched jaw and white knuckles. “Cut her head off and she’ll still find a way to kill you and make a profit doing it. Genius, she is, simply genius.” Settling back into the white leather cushions of his office chair, Landeshaw props his ankles atop his desk and accepts the tablet and portfolio from Agatha in exchange for a kiss over her fingers. After a moment to flip through the printouts and eye the screen on the tablet, he glances up at Sherlock and John. “Ixion, then, is it?”

 

            Sherlock nods tersely. “For whatever reason, my brother believes you may be able to assist, Mr Shawland.” Lifting a hand to his lips and raising his eyebrows in a mockery of embarrassment, he chuckles. “I’m so sorry, did I say that? Mr Landeshaw.”

 

            The smile that unfurls on Landeshaw’s face doesn’t reach his eyes. “Oh, so you did meet Melanie. Lovely girl, isn’t she? Agatha picked her personally for the job. You do have a _way_ with such things, my dear.” At that, Landeshaw’s smile does reach his eyes, but only for a moment, and only when Agatha gently, possessively rests her hand atop his shoulder. “I can’t say I expected McConn to be so crass, but I’d be a liar if I said I was surprised by it. Certainly made the decision to label him expendable an easier one, though I suspect we would have been better off if we’d arranged an accident for the little bastard sooner. No doubt Melanie would have jumped at the chance, but Jim found him entertaining; God only knows why. Wretched sot.”

 

            Sherlock and John exchange an incredulous look. Is _no one_ really who they say they are?

 

            “Touché, Mr Landeshaw,” Sherlock sighs. There’s no point in continuing a fight when your own blade has been turned against you.

 

            Landeshaw merely gives his not-quite-a-smile again and lowers his feet to the floor. “As I am told you so love to say: _obviously_ , Mr Holmes.” He laughs and sits back in his chair. “Such a shame, really. Mary seemed to think you quite clever.” At John’s flinch and scowl, Landeshaw laughs again. “Oh, dear—is Miss Mary _Watson_ a sore subject, Captain?”

 

            It’s as if John ages twenty years in mere seconds; pale and drawn, he clenches his jaw and closes his eyes. At the same time, Agatha pointedly removes her hand from her husband’s shoulder and steps away.

 

            Sherlock meets the unmoored Landeshaw’s gaze with a brumal one of his own. “I doubt that I need to tell you what happened to the last man who made that mistake,” he snarls, letting his voice drop to its quietest, most menacing register.

 

            The beginning of a smug chuckle starts to leave Landeshaw’s chest. “Oh? Going to shoot me in the head, then, just like Charlie?” He turns back to invite Agatha to share in mocking Sherlock, but the only thing she shares with him is a look of such disgusted _disappointment_ that he actually pales and shrinks down in his chair a bit. “Right, then.” Gathering the tablet and the portfolio, Landeshaw fumbles a slim pair of spectacles from the inner pocket of his blazer and clumsily settles them atop his nose. “Let me, ah, go over the facts.”

 

            The silence that falls over the office is anything but. How can it be, when Sherlock can hear John’s too-controlled exhalations and the rustling hush of his shaking left hand against his jeans? He wants to shake his head, to dislodge John’s sounds and everything he can deduce from them (exhaustion, humiliation, _pain_ , so much _pain_ )—he needs the clarity and objectivity, now more than ever before. At the same time, though, he _can’t_ ignore the sounds and their implications. He cannot leave John to his pain again, not after the vows he made, but... how does one dress a wound one cannot even see, much less comprehend?

 

            John’s soft ‘no, thank you’ pulls Sherlock from his thoughts. He watches as Agatha gracefully accepts his refusal, returning the Persian teacup and saucer to a tray beside the kettle on a side table. Agatha shoots her husband a warning glare when he appears to be about to speak to John; chastised, the man subsides and returns to his reading.

 

            John offers Sherlock a wan smile when their eyes meet and shakes his head subtly: _I’m fine_ , the gesture says. _Don’t bother._

 

            Sherlock purses his lips and makes a mental note to call Angelo with a commission for the finest meal he can produce and to locate and procure one of John’s ridiculous Bond films as soon as they’ve gotten the information they need from Landeshaw. He will bother exactly as much as John deserves. It’s his responsibility, after all, what with the vow he made.

 

            Papers rustle and flap as Landeshaw sets them down on his desk. “Who mentioned Ivan Moroz to you, Mr Holmes?” he asks, looking at Sherlock over the frames of his spectacles. “We keep the Russian branch at arm’s length on good days, you see, as they do to us; very, very few in either branch are privy to the knowledge that we are, in fact, part of the same syndicate. Other than Mary, Mycroft Holmes, Agatha, and myself, there are perhaps fifteen who would know the name and only three who would know why it’s important.”

 

            John gives a little grunt of recollection and looks to Sherlock. “The phone call.” At Sherlock’s nod, he continues. “One of the men M... she killed was on his phone with one of his coworkers when he was shot. You called him.”

 

            “He claimed Orson had been on the brink of some sort of deal with Russian oil interests and gave the name Ivan Moroz as a place to start,” Sherlock supplies.

 

            Landeshaw glances back at Agatha, who shakes her head once with a steely, thin-lipped expression. “Samuel Orson had no such deal,” she says. “We, however, do.”

 

            _Oh._

 

            If there’s no connection to be drawn between the Russian and European branches of the syndicate without crucial inner-circle knowledge, why would someone bother drawing Sherlock’s attention (and thus police attention) to the Russians unless... “You’re the European underboss, aren’t you?” he breathes. Agatha’s nod confirms it. “This isn’t a power play. It’s removing obstacles.

 

            “You operate as a communications company, but in reality you specialise in surveillance and security, focussing specifically on overseeing and enforcing the European operations of the syndicate.” Yet again, Agatha nods. “Connecting you to any dealings with the Russians in today’s political climate through a high-profile shooting would splash you all over the media and put you on the back foot indefinitely, regardless of the deal’s nature, and would cut Mary off from in-syndicate information _and_ protection.”

 

            Landeshaw frowns. “We’ve had record profits across the board since Mary took over. Why in God’s name would someone jeopardize that?”

 

           

            “Loyalty,” says Agatha, softly. “It was profit that drew us to Jim’s syndicate, dear, but for others, it was Jim.” She turns to Sherlock, grim. “Who told you about Ivan Moroz, Mr Holmes?”

 

            “Frederick Riesch,” he says.

 

            Agatha nods. “He’s your Ixion. He is the president of the investment firm where Orson and McConn worked, but he has a degree in Greek literature and mythology.” The expression she turns on her husband this time is one of wary but growing satisfaction. “I have been waiting for this for quite some time, haven’t I, dear?” she asks, cupping his face with one hand.

 

            Landeshaw nods and leans into the touch. “You have.”

 

            With all the somber, chill grace of an angel of death, she gathers up the folio of papers and the tablet computer from her husband’s desk and hands. “Show our guests out, Alistair, and then join me in my office.” She pauses in the doorway. “Bring your cane.”

 

            All the way back to the lifts, Alistair Landeshaw is silent.

 

            John lets out a long, shaky breath once the lift doors have shut. “I am almost completely certain that she’s going to beat him.”

 

            Sherlock nods. “I suspect you’re right.”

 

            For a moment, the two of them just stand there and try not to laugh.

 

            “It was productive, at least.”

 

            After a check on the baby (asleep) and the time (fifteen minutes before she’ll want a feeding), Sherlock nods and closes his eyes. “Frederick Riesch.” Opening them, he sighs. “I should have realised it earlier, but I’m fairly certain he knew who I was. What a credulous fool I am, John!”

 

            To Sherlock’s surprise, John slides an arm around his waist and squeezes once in addition to giving his usual, dismissive little sniff. “Enough of that. You’re not credulous and you’re not a fool; you were on a mobile phone in a shitty little deli.”

 

            Sherlock is not credulous, not a fool, and he’s standing in a lift with John Watson pressed all along his side and with an arm wrapped around his waist. “I, er. That’s... thank you.” No, he's definitely a fool.

 

            “And hey, think of it this way—at least I don’t cane you every time you’re a massive berk.”

 

            Low, wicked chuckles escape Sherlock before he can leash them; he’s still trying to stifle them when the lift dings, John steps away, and the doors open. “You’re horrible,” he says to John, and devolves into childish laughter again when John tosses him a cheeky wink. “Absolutely horrible.”

 

            John’s reply is lost as they pass through a chattering crowd of tourists leaving one of the observation deck lifts. Sherlock does his best to catch up, but the blathering imbeciles only seem to move at once pace and in as tight a cluster as possible. When he tries to slide past, citing the baby at his chest as his need for haste, he’s merely jostled and ignored. Fuming but stuck, Sherlock follows John’s silver-ash-blond hair as best he can.

 

            It’s terribly strange, though. No matter how he tries to follow, the farther away John seems to get, lost in a sea of bobbing heads and parted hair and shoulders. He begins to feel dizzy, watching the waves of humans, the way they bob and weave and roll, and

 

then John is there, thank God, hello John, yes,

 

 

                       

            he is holding John’s beautiful daughter, with his eyes, Sherlock loves John’s eyes

 

                        yes you can take her, John, he says, but then

                                               

                                   

                                                            where are you going, John, don’t go, something

 

                                                                                                                        isn’t right

 

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do let me know if you spot any errors or Americanisms. Also, constructive criticism is highly appreciated-- I'm so exhausted these days after full days of volunteer work at the local science and tech museum that I just haven't been able to write or revise things the way I'd like to, and I worry that it's showing. :\
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! To those of you who have left comments and/or kudos-- you guys seriously make my day with your support, I kid you not. Thanks so very much. :)


	10. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only problem with working 9-5 at a hands-on science museum aimed at children is the fact that the children, though delightful, come in with nasty little viruses and bugs that non-children non-parent people have little to no immunity for. 
> 
> Also, how long does it take people to get back to people about job applications? I would rather like to hear a 'yes' or 'no' from at least *one* of the places I applied to...
> 
> Deepest apologies for this being so very late. It's been bonkers over here. Let me know if there are any errors or Americanisms, and thank you for your support and comments-- I love every one of them. :)

            Consciousness returns slowly.

 

            At first it’s just sound—his name, mostly—and he thinks that it can’t be John since John never says his name like that.

 

            The person calling him doesn’t let up. Soon he’s aware that his mouth feels as if it’s full of cotton and that his head feels strangely light and floaty, as if up and down aren’t feeling quite so strict about things at the moment and have convinced left and right that they really don’t need to be so straitlaced, either.

 

            He’s not sure how much he likes that. He’s quite sure he doesn't like the fact that it isn’t John saying his name over and over. John says it so much better. He’s very interested in listening to John once the baby has a name. He wonders if he’ll say her name the same way he says ‘Sherlock’.

 

            Will this not-John person ever shut up? Sherlock tries to get up and register his displeasure with them, but moving proves to be a terrible plan. The floaty, whirly feeling redoubles and he’s half-convinced that he’ll either tip over onto the floor or float off the bed entirely. Groaning, Sherlock raises hands to anchor his head and is startled when a blanket comes with them. He’s confused when he finally registers that he’s on some sort of couch, and then he’s alarmed when he opens his eyes and picks out Agatha Landeshaw’s features from the blurry mess that greets him. “What.”

 

            “You’ve been drugged, Mr Holmes.”

 

            It’s less a rush of memory and more a sudden reprioritisation of information as Sherlock’s mind escapes enough of the drug to start functioning at something approaching proper functionality. His hands fly to his chest and pat fruitlessly at the empty folds of the carrier wrap; the sound that escapes him as he clutches at the cloth is uncomfortably close to a panicked sob. “Where is she!? Where is John!?” He forces himself to sit up and immediately regrets it when the room—the Landeshaws’ office, apparently—starts spinning again.

 

            Unforgivable. He cannot be dizzy when John and the baby are gone.

 

            Alistair Landeshaw appears at his elbow at Agatha’s signal, helping him to his feet and steadying him as he gets his bearings about him. He nods and Agatha presents him with a tablet computer; there’s camera footage of the lobby on the screen. “We’ve gained access to the security footage. As best as we can tell, two men broke off from the tourist group and approached Captain Watson from behind. We think you were drugged when you were jostled; after you handed over the baby and collapsed, a third man joined the other two and walked the Captain out of the building.”

 

            Heart pounding, Sherlock watches the screen as the scene plays out—the two men flank and redirect John at almost exactly the same time as Sherlock is bumped. The image is grainy, but Sherlock can see John’s clenched jaw and the pained expression on his face as Sherlock slumps to the floor in front of him. By the time the tourists have realised something is wrong, the two men flanking John have been joined by the third and are walking out the glass doors. The footage then switches to an outdoor view, where the plate and model of the car John is forced into are clearly visible.

 

            The door to the office opens and the young woman from earlier appears. “We’re in, Ms Agatha—you were right. We’ve found several payments made to Greystone over the past three weeks.”

 

            “Thank you, Maryam.” Pursing her lips, Agatha enters something on the tablet and then turns to her husband. “Get our things, Alistair, and bring a set for Mr Holmes. Catherine and her team are in pursuit.”

 

            ***

 

            The baby nuzzles into the crook of John’s neck and roots blindly, grizzling. John, for his part, blinks owlishly in the sudden light—after being blindfolded in the car and driven about for God knows how long, he’s having difficulty getting his eyes readjusted.

 

            Wherever he is, however, there’s serious money involved. He’s on a suede couch that looks like it belongs in an art museum, the coffee table in front of him probably cost about as much as it would to buy 221B outright, and the view through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind the table is a nearly-uninterrupted view of the Thames that stretches from Canary Wharf in the east, past the Shard and the Walkie-Talkie to the south, and the Eye and much of Westminster to the west.

 

            The baby’s unhappy gruntings begin to escalate to more serious fussing; somewhere behind John, someone lets out a frustrated sigh. “Will you _do_ something about that _noise?_ ”

 

            John goes to turn around and accost the speaker—male, soft voice, possibly Liverpudlian—but gets a warning poke to the back with something cold, small, and cylindrical. He heeds the warning and goes back to looking out the window. “She’s hungry.” He channels as much disdain and ‘isn’t-it-obvious-what’s-wrong-with-you’ into his tone as he can manage. “It certainly isn’t my fault that you’ve taken the bag with her bottles.”

 

            There’s an exasperated growl and some sort of uncomplimentary muttering. “By the door. Make sure he doesn’t try anything.”

 

            Booted footfalls that hark back to John’s days in the army move across the room behind him. Even the sounds of weaponry and combat gear shifting are there—whoever the person is, they’re not one of the three plainclothes goons who had accosted him in the tower. Once the footfalls stop, John waits for them to begin again and starts counting.

 

            Thirty steps later, the bag appears in John’s peripheral vision as it’s lowered over the back of the couch. “Thank you,” he says, and unzips the bag without turning. Thirty-two steps... that’s fifteen full strides, then. He lifts out the cooler and checks the contents of the bottles. Assuming Sherlock’s estimates and John’s memory hold, the average stride is a bit over a meter and a half long, so fifteen meters plus another seven or eight: if the goon’s path is a straight line, he’s looking at twenty-three or twenty-four metres from the door to John’s position.

 

            By himself, he’d consider that doable, but he’s anything _but_ alone. John lets out a quiet sigh and finds a burping cloth in the bag, slinging it over his shoulder before gently nudging his daughter’s lips with the nipple on the bottle. After a bit more fussing, she accepts it and begins to eat, quieting to the occasional grunt and crinkle of her tiny nose.

 

            John’s lips twitch into a smile despite the anxiety curling high and tight in his chest. He dips in and presses his lips to the fuzzy crown of his daughter’s head, resting them there and closing his eyes as he takes in the milky, chalky scent of her. “We’ll get out of this,” he murmurs, tucking his chin in so he can rest his forehead lightly against hers. She pauses briefly in her suckling, denim blue eyes dancing over the details of his face. “You and me and Sherlock. Promise.” He knows she can’t possibly understand, but she closes her eyes and resumes eating, as if reassured.

 

            Faintly, the sound of phone keys being pressed floats across the room. After a long moment—waiting for someone to pick up?—the man from earlier clears his throat. “Mary, dearest lovely Mary. It’s time you answered for your crimes,” he croons. “I have the doctor and your whelp; I recommend you come quietly and unarmed if you want them to remain unharmed.”

 

            John tenses. The idea of being in the same room as Mary rattles angrily in his head and his chest, sparking fury and hope and agony all at once. If Sherlock and Mycroft aren’t the ones to get John and the baby out of this, Mary is without a doubt the only other person capable of doing it, but John doesn’t know if he can bear to hear her voice again. He wants it, wants it so badly, but at the same time, he wants to get as far away as possible so he never has to hear it again. It’s like the months after breaking up with his secondary-school sweetheart, his heart simultaneously expanding and crushing down on itself under his ribs, except now it’s a thousand times worse.

 

            Behind John, someone shuffles uneasily and switches the safety on their gun; it jerks him out of his thoughts as effectively as a splash of cold water. “Man, I liked this job early on, but I didn’t sign on tuh kill no babies. Yer gunna havtuh find some other sick fuck, man, cuz I ain’t him.”

 

            John hears the rattle of a magazine being ejected and pocketed—apparently, the American is disengaging his weapon in protest. Footsteps start away decisively, but then, twenty-eight steps later, a muffled gunshot rings out and there’s a sound like someone dropping a sack full of books.

 

            Except for the baby’s disgruntled squawk, there’s a long, long moment of shocked silence. John shuts his eyes.

 

            “Would anyone else like to lodge a complaint?” When the soft-voiced man doesn’t get a response, he continues. “Such a brave young man, dying in the line of duty. You’ll be quite sure to let your superiors know how valiantly he performed his job, won’t you?” Footsteps are followed by a door opening. “You. Get in here and take his post.” The door shuts again. “Now, I sincerely hope I won’t be hearing any more whingeing about who you will or won’t hurt. That’s not what I hired you for.”

 

            John nuzzles the baby, who stares back up at him over the bottle with wide, startled eyes. “I know,” he murmurs, “I know.” Whoever the soft-voiced man is, he’s not afraid to kill a man in front of his teammates. More importantly, he’s _scary_. Even mercenary teams develop bonds, and the fact that the others aren’t retaliating is telling. After Afghanistan—after witnessing the things some people did simply because they were in the positions of power to do so—John is all too familiar with the type. All he can do is put his head down, keep the baby quiet and calm, and wait.

 

            Time seems to slow to a crawl as a tense, anxious silence settles over the room. The baby falls asleep as soon as she’s been burped and cleaned up a bit; cradling her close, John sits and stares out the window, watching as ferries crawl along the Thames and traffic on London Bridge stops and starts. He looks at the peak of the Shard, visible over the top of a roundish tower he’s pretty certain is the Walkie-Talkie, and wonders if Sherlock is awake yet.

 

            He tries not to think of the possibility that the goons could have given Sherlock an overdose of the sedative. He doesn’t think about the potential for the soft-voiced man to escalate, to hurt John or his daughter before Sherlock can arrive. He does try to think of 221B, of being home on the couch with the baby on his chest as Sherlock plays his violin, but he’s too attuned to every rustle and faint rattle that break the silence in the room behind his back. Even the goon behind him fiddling with their phone is almost too much for him to take; he’s of half a mind to ask for the blindfold back, please and thank you, so he’s not constantly tempted to just _look back_.

 

            When a knock finally sounds at the door, John isn’t the only one startled—he hears at least two people muttering under their breath and readjusting weaponry.

 

            “Let her in,” the soft-voiced man says.

 

            ***

 

            There had been a deer once, when Sherlock was six or seven; a stag. It had staggered into the garden whilst he and Mummy were digging and cataloguing the weeds, panting and twitching, the bloodshot whites of its eyes plainly visible as it stared at them over the azalea and dripped frothing spittle on the carmine flowers. Sherlock hadn’t protested when Mummy had grabbed him up like a rugby ball and bolted for the house—even he could see that something was terribly, terribly wrong about the deer in the garden. 

 

            As Sherlock stares at the man standing in the open-plan office on the forty-fourth floor of the Leadenhall building, he can’t help but be reminded of that day. There’s something disturbed about Frederick Riesch, something mad-eyed and shuddering that the opulent three-piece suit, sturdy musculature, and charming features don’t quite hide.

 

            Riesch regards Sherlock serenely, but when he speaks, his tone is alkaline, stripped of dignity by its greasy bitterness. “ _You_.” It’s not a question, but the corrosive tone makes it clear—Sherlock is not who Frederick Riesch had wanted to see behind the door.

 

            Sherlock lets his gaze wander from side to side, taking in the whole of the office floor. The building hasn’t been opened yet, not officially; though the office is furnished, much of the floor is empty, providing ample sight lines for the three compact, deadly figures in combat gear and balaclavas. The one that had opened the door and the one standing near Riesch are both wielding American army-issue M16s, but the one fiddling with his phone in the back of the room is holding a Tavor SAR-B18—Americans, then, or meant for him to mistake them as such. Sprawled facedown on the floor in a pool of blood is a fourth mercenary, his unloaded weapon a meter away from his hand and a neat, dark hole in the back of his head. Sherlock doesn’t need to turn to know that the back of the door probably sports a splattering of gore and an embedded bullet.

 

            Movement from the couch in the back of the room catches his eye, and his heart leaps into his throat. Right there, right behind the mercenary with their hands on the grip and trigger of the B18, is the ashy blonde back of John Watson’s head.

 

            His gaze snaps back to Riesch, whose stoic expression has slid into insincere pity. “What a dreadful shame. She can’t even be moved to protect her own husband and child, so she sends an _errand boy_?”

 

            Ah. “And walk willingly to her own death? You deserve whatever punishment she’ll be meting out when this is all said and done if you’ve underestimated her that badly.”

 

            John’s head snaps up, but he doesn’t turn—bound or threatened? Reluctantly, Sherlock drags his gaze back to Riesch as the man reaches into his suit jacket and draws a handgun from an under-arm holster. “It sounds so reasonable when you put it that way. Did she feed you that line, I wonder? Whisper it in your ear and make it true the way she did with Jim?”

 

            Sherlock’s hands fly up without his bidding when the gun is levelled at the couch John is sitting in. “She did,” he agrees hastily, “she did, she said you would kill her and she’d never know _why._ ” Paranoia, he thinks, or an obsession—either way, he needs to play off of it, make himself a victim too. “She’s watching me right now, she’ll kill me if I fail, God, just tell me why so I can tell her, _please_ ,” he begs, transmuting his terror at the sight of a gun pointed at John into the sound of being pinned under a sniper’s crosshairs. John’s position in front of the windows makes his nervous glances in that direction all the more sincere; he can see it when Riesch takes the bait.

 

            “Have you ever seen someone with a terminal illness, Mr Holmes?” he asks in his soft, reasonable voice. “Have you ever watched their family members? Friends?” Sherlock finds himself staring down the barrel of the handgun as Riesch uses it to point at him. “Just watch them, Mr Holmes. They’re so ready and willing to believe that the absence of symptoms is reason for _hope_ , aren’t they?” He sneers. “Profits are up, but it’s a gilded poison, Mr Holmes, it’s been in the water for years, tainting the roots, working its way to the brain, the beating heart of the network.

 

            “That was Jim, Mr Holmes. You remember him, don’t you?” Riesch bares his teeth at Sherlock. “It was _her_ , you know. She started like the rest of us did, but working with us was never good enough, no, she had to be _better._ Oozing her way up, one poor sod at a time, a smile here, a date there, borrowing favours and assignments and then leaving her little trail of conquests behind like so much rubbish. I watched her, I did—she didn’t see me, thought I was useless, but I saw her, Mr Holmes, I saw what she was doing!”

 

            Sherlock nods and makes an understanding face. “She went right past you and went for the throat. For Jim.”

 

            “ _YES!_ ” Riesch snarls, lashing out with one foot at a nearby chair. He kicks it again after it topples. “Jim was a _genius,_ a _God amongst men_ , and she twisted him, made him believe he wasn’t something _more_ , _bent_ him under her fucking heel!” The gun swings around and points at Sherlock again. “She turned him onto you, Mr Holmes, whispered in his ear and slowly turned his attention away from us, away from his _work_ , made him believe he was like you— _tame._ She never even saw what I saw, that James was never meant to be tied down or held to her cute little picket fence business world, never recognised the genius that I saw, the _artistry_ , and then she gives it up for that _pathetic_ doctor because ‘Jim told me to?’ Mr Holmes, I know what she wanted, and it was a bit of rough and easy money, never mind the rest of us or James Moriarty!”

 

            All thoughts of motive fly from Sherlock’s head as the gun swings to point at the couch again. “No!” he barks, palms outstretched again. Have to stop him, have to make John a non-target, but how...? “You’re just playing into her hands if you do that!”

 

            Riesch’s head snaps around like an animal scenting blood.

 

            “You were Jim’s greatest proponent,” Sherlock ventures. “He saw that, never acknowledged it but he saw it, and she’s going to use you to smear his name in the media even more if you kill them.”

 

            The gun drops; Sherlock’s knees very nearly go out with it. “Get. Her. Here,” Riesch snarls. He barely remembers to reset the safety before jamming his gun back into the under-arm holster. “Get your phone, call her, and get her here. I don’t care how, just _DO IT!_ ”

 

            Sherlock doesn’t need to fake fumbling for his phone; the sheer relief after such a close call is leaving him clammy and weak. He manages to get his phone out and shows Riesch the screen as he dials.

 

            He presses ‘call’.

 

            Across the room, at the back of the couch, a phone rings.

 

            The Tavor roars.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are, the last chapter. What a ride, eh?
> 
> Let me know if you spot typos or egregious Americanisms. :)

            Silence crashes over the room as Riesch crumples to the floor with a wet thump.

 

            Sherlock lowers his arms, watching as Mary stalks up to Riesch’s body and nudges it with one booted toe. Levelling the Tavor, she toggles something on the rifle and fires a single shot.

 

            If Riesch was not dead before, he certainly is now.

 

            Mary meets Sherlock’s gaze; the Tavor swings on its sling as she lets it go to offer him a hand, apparently indifferent to the fine spray of blood coating the backs of Sherlock’s gloves and his forearms. “Take care of them for me,” she murmurs once he’s regained his feet.

 

            Floored, Sherlock stares down at Mary as outrage quickly overtakes what little shock remains from seeing Riesch gunned down so unexpectedly.

 

            He’s willing to overlook Mary’s departure, inasmuch as a total loss of trust but a preservation of neutral relations can be considered ‘overlooking’ the issue—he’s not exactly in the position to criticize her decision, given that he left in just as (unintentionally) cruel a fashion. He’s happy to gloss over Mary’s part in four (possibly more) murders in the past three days, too, as they’re serving the purpose of keeping John and the baby safe. Finally and perhaps most importantly, he’s _more_ than willing to take care of John and his daughter in the aftermath of this unmitigated disaster. 

 

            He is _not_ , however,willing to take care of John and the baby for Mary’s sake. He rounds on her and deliberately looms, ignoring the threat of the rifle hanging from its sling over her shoulder. “ _Never for you,_ ” he spits. “I am not your _placeholder;_ I will not ensure their happiness and safety as some sort of _proxy_ for everything you _should_ be to them.” He shakes his head. “I made a _vow,_ Mary. I failed him in the worst way possible and I have _sworn_ to do right by John Watson, and if you think I’m about to shoulder _your_ responsibility to your husband and daughter for you, you are _sadly mistaken._ ”

 

            Mary stares up at him, expression unreadable beneath her balaclava. Eventually, she bows her head and lowers her eyes. “Good.” She executes a crisp about-face. “Agatha, Alistair.”

 

            The Landeshaws enter the penthouse at a brisk trot; together with the other two mercenaries, they heft the bodies of Riesch and the fourth mercenary. With a last look toward the windows and John, she directs them out of the room and shuts the door behind her.

 

            Sherlock watches as John slowly turns around on the couch.

 

            The doctor’s voice is quiet, resigned. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

 

            Sugarcoating has never been Sherlock’s style. “She is.” He sheds his coat as he crosses the room to John’s side, only to find himself subject to an expression of indigo-eyed bewilderment. “Are you all right?”

 

            John nods, then shudders when Sherlock drapes his blazer over his shoulders in lieu of a shock blanket. “She’s... she’s gone.” He looks down at the baby, then back up at Sherlock. “Really gone.”

 

            There’s just enough space for Sherlock to sit down at the end of the couch. John doesn’t move away; Sherlock isn’t sure if it’s a sign of trust or of shock. “I... believe so,” he replies quietly.

 

            John holds the baby close and strokes her cheek with the backs of two shaking fingers. For a moment, he’s so caught up in her that it seems as if he’s forgot about Sherlock entirely; when he looks up suddenly and seizes Sherlock’s wrist with his free hand, Sherlock jumps. “You. You’re not going to—go. You can’t.” He struggles with the words, seems to swallow back emotion. “Please just. Don't. Don’t leave, again.”

 

            “I won’t,” Sherlock replies. He sits quietly and meets John’s searching gaze ampere for ampere. “I made a vow, John.”

 

            A snort. “Plenty of people make vows.” John’s tone is bitter. “People promise love. Support. A lifetime, in sickness and health, til death do us part, and what’ve I got to show for it?” He demands this of Sherlock as if he expects an answer.

 

            It takes Sherlock a bit before he comes up with that answer. “Your daughter, I suppose.” Sherlock cups the baby’s fuzzy head with one hand and runs his thumb over the soft, delicate divot of her anterior fontanelle. “John, I am not ‘people’. I don’t know how to raise a child. The goods and not-goods of social interactions aren’t worth my time. I hunt down murderers and keep body parts in the refrigerator.” Shaking his head, he regards John with a lopsided smile that’s more sincere than he intends it to be. “I play the violin when I’m thinking.”

 

            John looks up at Sherlock in startlement.

 

            “Sometimes I don’t talk for hours on end,” Sherlock continues. “Would that bother you?”

 

            John’s breath is coming in soft puffs, like pants or sobs or laughs or perhaps all three. His eyes shine with tears he keeps blinking back, and the corners of his lips are curling downwards even as the rest of his mouth tries to curl up into a smile. “No,” he exhales shakily. “God, no.”

 

            ***

 

            The baby flexes her arms and kicks her legs atop John’s chest, blue eyes open but unfocussed in the dim quiet of Sherlock’s room.

 

            John rests his hands against her sides and lets his head fall back to the pillow. “She needs a name,” he says into the stillness.

 

            Soft rustles precede Sherlock’s neutral ‘hmm’. Another, more vigorous rustle, several departing footfalls, then a somewhat-distant spit—he’s just brushed his teeth, John decides. He spares the detective a brief glance when he reappears in the doorway. “Did you have one picked?”

 

            A wood-on-wood slide accompanied by a more unusual rattle—the sock index? John wants to think about the sock drawer and its ridiculous wooden lattice. He doesn’t want to think about all those conversations with Mary. “Yes,” he says, because it’s true, but how is he supposed to know what _was_ true? “We... we did.”

 

            Sherlock riffles through the rattley drawer. “Are there any you want to keep?”

 

            John considers that for a moment. “Mary liked Jessica. Rebecca, Samantha, Emily.”

 

            Something arcs past John’s field of view and lands with a muffled thump somewhere on the other side of the room. “Popular names,” Sherlock remarks, almost snidely.

 

            “Anonymous names,” John says, because they are. Searching for Jessica Watson turns up an Australian sailor wunderkind, a haidresser, an artist. The others are much the same. He wonders if Mary picked those names as protection. He wonders whom she was protecting by picking them.

 

            The sock drawer is slammed shut and a wardrobe is thrown open. “I take it you disapprove?”

 

            John shrugs, or shrugs as best as he can with a baby balanced on his chest. “A name’s only as anonymous as you make it. Gets old, having the same name as half a dozen other people.”

 

            “Too strange and she’ll be teased,” Sherlock responds, somber. John doesn’t doubt that he’s speaking from experience. “You must have had names selected, surely?”

 

            “Elspeth,” John blurts out before he can stop himself. “It’s... my great-grandmum, her name was Elspeth. Elsie.” He bites his lip. “Imogen—Immy. Viola. Adelaide.”

 

            Sherlock chuckles. “Very traditional of you, John.”

 

            John grimaces. “I know, I know, but... they’re good names. She’ll never be anyone but herself.”

 

            The bed dips as Sherlock sits down and shuffles back against the headboard. “You prefer Elspeth,” he states, no need to ask John to confirm. “Remember, you do have the option of a middle name. You can balance Elspeth with a more...”

 

            “Normal name?” John suggests, chuckling.

 

            “Boring, but yes,” Sherlock concedes with a laugh. John hears him pecking away at his mobile phone. “Hm. Apparently Imogen was the forty-third most popular name in 2013,” he remarks, “and Elsie was forty-fifth. Seems you’re not alone in your preference for older names.”

 

            John laughs and waggles his fingers in front of the baby’s face. She reaches out and seizes his first finger. “Elspeth it is, then,” he confirms, wiggling his finger and her hand with it. “Hello, Elsie. Now... Kathleen or Rosalind, Sherlock?”

 

            Sherlock’s thumbs stop their pecking. “What?”

 

            Turning his head so he can look up at Sherlock, John can’t help smiling at the look of startled confusion on the detective’s face. “Pick a middle name, Sherlock. Kathleen or Rosalind? Elsie and I are waiting.”

           

            Apparently poleaxed, Sherlock opens and closes his mouth a few times. “But...”

 

            Sighing, John lifts Elsie from his chest and sits up so he can scoot back against the headboard with Sherlock. “I want you to choose.”

 

            Sherlock’s mutable, silver irises are just pale rims around his pupils in the low light, yet his gaze is as piercing as ever. John just waits patiently—Sherlock’s expression is that specific sort of unreadable that he only ever affects when sentiment gets the better of him. “Rosalind Franklin,” he says, thoughtfully, “or Kathleen Lonsdale. Chemists.”

 

            Blushing, John shrugs. “I... yeah,” he says, caught out. If Mary hadn’t approved of Elspeth, he’d fully intended to give their daughter a middle name honouring a woman whose discoveries had contributed considerably to Sherlock’s Work—after all, where would John be without it?

 

            Sherlock looks down at Elsie and gives a funny little snort of a laugh. “Rosalind _Elsie_ Franklin.”

 

            John gapes. “Seriously?”

 

            “Indeed,” Sherlock confirms, clearly fighting a wry smile. “Rosalind. Elspeth Rosalind Watson.” He bows his head for a moment. “John... thank you.”

 

            John shifts Elsie to his left arm and shoves his right underneath Sherlock’s back, pulling him into a sideways hug that’s as awkward as it is fulfilling. “Nothing to thank me for, you pillock.” He smiles as Sherlock tentatively drapes an arm over John’s shoulders in return and gives himself several long moments to enjoy the contact. Eventually, though, he has to move. “Right. So. It’s late. I’ll just... get her to bed and...”

 

            The cool fingers that lace themselves around his wrist as he goes to get out of the bed are unexpected. John looks back at Sherlock, confused, but the detective’s expression is back to that odd, unreadable state. “John, you... I would not be averse to your company,” he blurts out in a sudden spill of words, gaze averted and cheeks darkened with a blush.

 

            Not too long ago, John would have deflected such an offer with as much awkward apologising and denial as possible. The emotions tangled up with Sherlock Holmes were simply too many, too convoluted, and too _intense_ to be faced down, never mind acknowledged. Now, as he feels his own heart rate kick up and watches Sherlock try to surreptitiously gauge his response without seeming to make eye contact, he takes inventory of what he’s feeling and finds that, though the intensity remains unchanged, only pleased anticipation and a sense of _finally, finally_ remain.

 

            The second or two it takes John to come to his conclusion is apparently enough time for Sherlock to skip waiting for a response and go straight to silent self-flagellation. “Hey, hey,” he says, lifting Sherlock’s chin with his fingertips. “Out of there; it’s fine.” The impulse strikes him fast and hard, and he doesn’t bother to fight it—he leans in and presses his lips against Sherlock’s warm, full ones. He pulls back, and Sherlock stares up at him with wide eyes gone dark. “It’s all fine.”

 

            “Oh,” Sherlock breathes.

 

            John smiles.

           

 

      

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rosalind Franklin was a biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was critical to Watson and Crick's model of DNA. It was shown to them without her permission or knowledge, however, and they never credited her properly in their article or in their Nobel acceptance speeches, never mind the fact that she had worked out the B-form structure of DNA entirely on her own and earlier than they had.
> 
> Kathleen Lonsdale was an X-ray crystallographer who proved that benzene rings are flat and the first to use Fourier spectral methods (read: insane maths) to solve the structure of hexachlorobenzene.
> 
> Epilogue to follow.


	12. Epilogue

 

 

            _Twenty months_

_***_

 

            “Elsie.”

 

            “Yes.”

 

            “Do you want to go on the Tube with us to see Uncle Greg?”

 

            Blonde brows furrow in a very serious, deliberate expression of contemplation as Elspeth considers her options. “Yes,” she consents with a businesslike little nod. Before John can scoop her up and get her ready to go out, she’s stamp-stamping (her favourite mode of locomotion) over to Sherlock in the kitchen. She stares up at him, her little lips moving as she decides on her words. “Papa, l’mooseek, ss... see...”

 

            “ _S’il vous plaît_ ,” Sherlock says, gently, looking down from his microscope. Elsie echoes him; this is enough for him to find the little Bluetooth speaker they’d bought that Christmas and pass it to her. “ _Deux mains_ ,” he reminds her, gesturing as if to hold the speaker with both hands, and she dutifully adds her right hand to her grip on the little device.

 

            John smiles as he watches his daughter return with the speaker clutched between her hands, Sherlock close on her heels. She’s a tiny thing and oh so serious (he worries about that sometimes), but her little mind is developing at a rate that even Sherlock has noticed. He’s teaching her _French,_ for fuck’s sake, and she’s barely twenty months old; most kids her age barely have fifty words to their name, never mind two hundred in two languages. “What are we listening to today, Elsie?”

 

            Elsie turns the speaker over in her hands and rubs a fingertip over the speaker grating ruminatively, the pink tip of her tongue making an appearance as she balances holding the speaker with two hands and using the one finger to feel the texture. She looks up, meets John’s eyes, and gives him a dazzling smile that shows all of her little teeth. “Tock!” She shakes the speaker for emphasis. “Tock, please.”

 

            “ _Bartok_ it is,” Sherlock chuckles. He slides around behind John, tapping away on the tablet in his partner’s hands. Elsie looks pleased when the soft, lilting strains of violins fill the air from the speaker in her hands; Sherlock looks pleased with her appreciation for his favourite composer. “We’ll be taking the Jubilee line, Elspeth.” Handing John the cold case file they’ll be returning to Greg, Sherlock plucks a dancing Elsie from the floor and talks her through the process of putting on her socks, shoes, and coat.

 

            Out on Baker Street, Sherlock begins to hum along to the music. Elsie, in her pram in front of him, joins in the singing despite the fact that she isn’t quite quick enough to keep up with the melody. The people they pass stare, ignore them, or giggle.

 

            John, for his part, smiles like the lucky, besotted fool he is.

 

            ***

 

            _Fourteen years_

 

            ***

 

            Sherlock looks up from his titration as Elspeth pads into the kitchen quietly. “Hi, Papa.” She dons a pair of goggles and gloves before joining Sherlock in front of the flask and burette, tucking herself against his side. “Working on the Thomas case again?”

 

            Nodding, Sherlock turns his head and kisses Elspeth’s forehead without taking his eyes from the colour of the liquid in the flask. As soon as he sees the barest tint of violet, he closes the burette and removes the flask, noting the change in the volume. “Gerald Thomas is innocent,” he tells her, planting another kiss over her blonde hair once he finishes writing. When she doesn’t respond immediately, he tilts his head. “Is everything all right?”

 

            Elspeth purses her lips just like her father when she’s mulling over something or finding the words to say or ask something difficult. “Why did my mother leave?”

 

            Sherlock sighs. Since Mary’s gift had appeared on their kitchen table the morning of Elspeth’s fourteenth birthday two weeks ago, he and John have been waiting for her to ask. Though John is away on a medical conference, Sherlock sticks to their agreed plan and tells her the truth. “When she left, she told me it was to protect you and your father.”

 

            A long moment of quiet passes as Elspeth processes. “This is to do with Moriarty somehow, isn’t it?” she asks.

 

            Jesus. Sherlock sits back in his chair and regards Elspeth with surprise. “Explain your reasoning,” he prompts her, as he always does when she shares her conclusions with him.

 

            “I don’t remember her, so she left before I was old enough to remember anything. She sent me the space book—caring, so she was telling the truth when she told you that. If she cares about me enough to send me a present I like but is still gone, she’s protecting us from something _really_ big. Moriarty is the scariest thing you and Dad did, so it’s probably something about him.”

 

            Sherlock nods and wonders if he shouldn’t have waited to begin teaching her inductive reasoning. “Let me call your father. He should be a part of this.”

 

            Elspeth perches on his knee as he dials John’s number and sets his mobile to speaker. At John’s sleepy hello, Elspeth speaks up. “I asked about my mother, Dad. I asked Papa if she has something to do with Moriarty. He didn’t tell me anything; I thought of it myself.”

 

            After a moment of silence, John groans. “Right. Right. Well, Elsie... it’s a long story. Do you want it now, or do you want to wait until I get home on Tuesday?”

 

            The determined set of Elspeth’s jaw is so much like John’s _I’m-bracing-myself-emotionally_ expression that Sherlock cannot help wrapping her in a gentle hug. “Now, Dad. Papa’s here with me. He’ll help.”

 

            John sighs. “Sherlock? You can tell the beginning the best.”

 

            Sherlock nods even though he knows John can’t see him. “It began, Elspeth, when a young man named Carl Powers died; I was just a few years younger than you are now when I saw the article in the papers...”

 

            ***

 

            _Twenty-eight years_

 

            ***

 

            The woman is perhaps a bit older than Papa. Though her back is straight, her movements are tired, slow, and somehow... sad.

 

            “It’s done,” she says when she reaches Papa and Dad where they sit at the table in the garden.

 

            For a long, long moment, Papa and Dad stare at the woman with unreadable expressions. They look at each other; without saying a word, they share an entire conversation.

 

            Slowly, Papa gets to his feet. The kettle still sits in the sun on the patio wall; with hands that are wizened but no less graceful, he pours a third mug of tea.

 

            Elspeth Rosalind Watson-Holmes smiles as her fathers fit themselves together in Dad’s chair with practiced ease. Once she sees Papa’s fingertips begin to dance Mendelssohn into Dad’s palm, she finishes arranging Dad’s scones on his favourite plate, drizzles Papa’s heather honey on, and makes her way to the garden.

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos; it really means a lot to me. It's been a mad ride since I started writing this, and I can't say I've been terribly good about updating in a timely manner, but I sincerely hope the story was worth waiting for through these last few chapters.
> 
> Again, thank you so very much. It's been an utter delight and I adore you all.
> 
> P.S. If any of you are going to the Sherlockian convention in Bloomington, Indiana, this September, do look for me. I'd love to meet my fellow Sherlock fans in person. Also, if you've little ones in tow, the WonderLab Museum of Science and Technology on Fourth Street is a fantastic place for them to burn off some extra energy. :)

**Author's Note:**

> "Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be." - Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha


End file.
